UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT    LOS  ANGELES 


(—-.,•; 


\\   :  ,^ 


BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

AND   OTHER   TALKS   ON    KINDRED   THEMES 


HOOKS  BY  ARTHUR  T.  HADLEY 

Prni,isiii:i)  }i\  C'liARi.Ks  Scribner's  Sons 


IjACCALArREATE     ADDRESSES,      AND     OTHER 

Talks  on  Kindred  Themes.    Net,  $1.00 

Freedom  and  Responsibtlity.    Net,  $1.00 

The  Education  of  the  American  Citi- 
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BACCALAUREATE 
ADDRESSES 

AND    OTHER 
TALKS   ON    KINDRED    THEMES 


BY 

ARTHUR   TWINING    HADLEY 

PRESIDENT   OF   YALE    UNIVERSITY 


NEW    YORK 

CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 

1907 


Copyright,  101)7,  by 
ARTHUR  TWIXINO  HADLEY 

Published.  March,  1907 


TROW   DiRECTORy 

PRlNTINO  «ND   BOOKBINDINQ  COMPANV 

NEW  YORK 


DC 


Z3Z5- 
H  11  b 


PREFACE 

The  greater  part  of  tins  volume  is  made  up 

of  talks  to  students.     Some  were  delivered  at  the 

opening  of  the  academic  year.     These  deal  chiefly 

'*^      with  the  moral  and  religious  problems  of  college 

X      life.     Others  were  given  on  the  Sunday  of  Com- 

""      mencement  week,  before  the  graduating  classes  of 

the  university  and  their  friends.     These  deal  with 

the  questions  which  a  man  must  answer  when  he 

makes  choice  of  a  career. 

At  the  time  when  most  of  these  addresses  were 
delivered  I  did  not  expect  that  they  would  be  col- 
lected or  preserved  in  a  published  book.  They 
were  prepared  as  talks  to  a  changing  audience, 
not  as  chapters  in  a  permanent  volume.  Issuing 
them,  as  I  now  do,  in  answer  to  requests  from  a 
^-  number  of  graduates  and  friends  of  the  university, 
a  it  has  seemed  best  to  leave  them  as  nearly  as  pos- 
sible in  their  original  form.  Under  these  circum- 
stances it  was  inevitable  that  the  same  thought 


369^79 


vi  PREFACE 

should  reappear  iu  cliffereut  addresses,  with  very 
slight  ehauges  of  wording.  For  these  repetitions  I 
ask  the  reader's  indulgence. 

I  have  added  at  the  close  of  the  volume  three 
talks  addressed  to  a  wider  range  of  hearers, 
on  moral  questions  connected  with  educational 
work.  One  of  these  was  delivered  in  the  Old 
South  Church  in  1901 ;  another  at  the  Second 
Presbyterian  Church  of  Philadelphia  in  1903  ;  and 
a  third  at  the  dedication  of  the  Broadway  Taber- 
nacle in  1905.  I  am  under  obligation  to  the  rep- 
resentatives of  these  churches  for  permission  to  use 
this  material;  and  also  to  Messrs.  T.  Y.  Crowell 
&  Company,  for  allowing  me  to  reprint  the  bacca- 
laureate address  on  The  Greatness  of  Patience, 
which  they  had  already  issued  in  separate  form. 

New  Haven,  January,  1907. 


CONTENTS 

BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES:  page 

The  Greatness  of  Patience  (1900)    ....      3 
The  Christian  Standard  of  Honor  (1901) 
The  Temptation  in  the  Wilderness  (1902) 
The  Spirit  op  Devotion  (1903)   . 
The  Large  View  of  Life  (1904) 
Religious  Rules  and  Religious  Ideals  (1905) 
The  Choice  of  a  Faith  (1906)    .... 


TALKS  ON  THE  OPENING  SUNDAYS  OP  THE 
COLLEGE  YEAR: 

A  Christian  Democracy  (1901) 109 

Public  Approval  as  a  Moral  Force  (1902)  .  .  120 
Responsibility  to  Ourselves  and  to  Others  (1903)  131 
Moral  Lessons  of  College  Life  (1904)    .        .        .  143 

Fixity  op  Purpose  (1905) 155 

The  Christian  Ideal  (1906) 165 

MESSAGES  OF  THE  COLLEGE  TO  THE  CHURCH : 
The  Development  of  Public  Spirit  (1901)       .        .177 
Education    and    Religion  (1903)        ....  191 
The  Public  Conscience  (1905) 203 


BACCALAUEEATE    ADDRESSES 


THE   GEEATNESS  OF  PATIENCE 

"  Followers  of  them  who  through  faith  and  patience 
inherit  the  promises." 

As  a  man  approaches  the  end  of  his  college 
course,  he  wishes  to  know  what  that  course  has 
done  to  prepare  him  for  the  work  which  is  to  fol- 
low. What  are  the  special  advantages  which  he 
enjoys  for  the  life  that  is  before  him  ?  What  are 
the  special  dangers  to  which  he  is  exposed  ? 

These  questions,  as  they  are  commonly  asked, 
refer  to  the  intellectual  side  of  college  life.  What 
sort  of  preparation  has  your  study  here  given  you 
for  the  professional  work  that  is  to  come  ?  To  this 
question  there  can  be  but  one  answer.  You  are 
told,  and  truly  told,  that  your  preparation  has  been 
one  of  theory  rather  than  of  practice ;  that  if  you 
will  submit  your  theoretical  power  and  breadth  of 
intellectual  vision  to  the  exigencies  of  practical 
life,  it  will  stand  you  in  good  stead  and  enable  you 
to  become  leaders  in  whatever  lines  of  work  you 
may  choose;  but  that  if  this  knowledge  of  theory 
causes  you  to  disregard  the  necessities  of  practice 

3 


4  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

it  w  ill  1)0  a  source  of  weakness  instead  of  strength, 
ami  will  unfit  you  for  the  exorcise  of  any  useful 
intiuence  on  tlie  aifairs  of  your  fellow  men.  All 
this  has  been  said  so  often  that  it  has  become 
commonplace. 

But  there  is  another  and  more  important  aspect 
of  the  whole  matter,  which  has  been  less  fre- 
quently considered.  What  does  a  college  course 
accomplish  in  the  way  of  moral  preparation  ? 
W^hat  are  the  spiritual  advantages  which  it  gives  ? 
What  are  the  spiritual  dangers  to  which  it  lays 
men  open?  You  have  received  from  your  friend- 
ships in  college,  and  from  the  associations  of  your 
college  with  the  historic  past,  a  wealth  of  inspira- 
tion, a  constant  stimulus  to  the  formation  of  high 
ideals.  Will  you  be  able  to  carry  this  inspiration 
and  these  ideals  safe  through  the  various  exigen- 
cies of  life  in  a  somewhat  unspiritual  world  ?  Will 
you  be  able  to  give  your  fellow  men  the  benefit 
of  what  you  have  received,  in  such  a  way  as  to 
make  you  a  moral  leader  in  an  age  which  craves 
such  leadership  ?  Or  will  your  ideals  be  so  remote 
from  every-day  dealing  with  the  affairs  of  life  that 
your  God  will  become  a  god  of  the  dead  and  not 
of  the  living? 


THE  GREATNESS  OF  PATIENCE        .     5 

All  depends  upon  the  question  whether  you 
have  patience,  in  the  largest  and  truest  sense  of 
the  word.  Patience  bears  the  same  sort  of  rela- 
tion to  faith  that  practical  power  bears  to  theoreti- 
cal insight.  It  is  the  union  of  these  two  attributes 
of  faith  and  patience  which  is  the  necessary  con- 
dition of  spiritual  achievement.  Either  of  these 
qualities  without  the  other  is  undeveloped  and  im- 
perfect. Nay,  each  is  necessary  to  the  other's  very 
existence.  Without  patience  we  may  sometimes 
see  what  is  popularly  called  faith;  without  faith 
we  may  sometimes  see  what  is  popularly  called 
patience;  but  in  neither  case  does  popular  usage 
conceive  the  words  in  their  truer  and  profounder 
meaning, 

Faith,  in  its  true  meaning,  is  not  a  mere  devo- 
tion to  intellectual  formulas  or  spiritual  ideas 
which  stand  apart  from  the  events  of  daily  life. 
It  is  easy  to  pretend  to  be  devoted  to  spiritual 
truth,  and  even  to  deceive  one's  self  by  that  pre- 
tence, as  long  as  this  spiritual  element  is  not 
brought  into  rude  contact  with  practical  affairs. 
Yet  only  by  such  rough  contact,  and  by  the  exer- 
cise of  that  patience  which  is  involved,  can  this 
faith  be  made  better  than  an  illusion.    Nor  are  we 


6  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

to  understand  by  patience  that  calmness,  akin  to 
apathy,  which  takes  evils  without  resistance  — 
which  passively  endures  what  comes,  because  too 
inert  to  strive  for  anything  better.  Not  by  such 
patience  has  any  man  inherited  promises.  The 
indifference  which  can  take  things  calmly  because 
of  the  absence  of  a  fixed  purpose  has  nothing  in 
common  with  that  true  patience  which  achieves 
calmness  in  spite  of  disappointment. 

In  speaking  to  an  audience  like  this,  very  few 
words  are  required  as  to  the  meaning  of  faith  and 
the  need  of  exercising  it.  You  are  not  likely  to 
fall  into  the  error  of  those  who  are  content  with 
that  visionary  idea  of  faith  which  is  remote  from 
the  problems  of  practical  morality;  nor  are  you 
likely  to  interpret  this  word  as  it  has  been  inter- 
preted at  some  times  and  in  some  places,  in  the 
sense  of  mere  assent  to  theological  creeds.  These 
creeds  have  their  uses.  The  habit  of  mind  which 
enables  a  man  to  assent  to  creeds  contributes  to  his 
practical  efficiency  by  relieving  him  of  mental  un- 
certainty. It  enables  him  to  range  himself  side  by 
side  with  those  engaged  in  a  common  purpose,  and 
gain  that  coherence  of  activity  which  is  the  result 
of  such  organization.    But  this  intellectual  part  of 


THE  GREATNESS   OF  PATIENCE  7 

faith  is  not  its  most  important  part.  It  is  not  in 
itself  more  meritorious  to  be  able  to  accept  a 
creed  than  to  be  able  to  accept  a  geometrical  propo- 
sition. The  real  faith  that  moves  the  world  is  a 
different  thing.  It  connects  itself  not  with  for- 
mulas, but  with  ideals ;  not  with  propositions,  but 
with  men.  The  man  who  holds  to  ideals,  and 
believes  in  men,  has  the  elements  of  faith  in  his 
character,  whether  he  find  it  easy  to  give  reasons 
for  his  faith  or  not. 

With  this  sort  of  faith,  the  college  atmosphere 
in  which  you  have  moved  has  been  charged  to 
the  utmost.  You  know  what  it  is  to  trust  one 
another.  You  know  what  it  is  to  work  for  ends 
which  3'OU  cannot  see  or  even  measure,  and  find 
a  joy  in  so  doing.  You  know  what  it  is  to  base 
your  estimates  of  life's  success  on  something 
higher  than  commercial  standards.  If  you  have 
not  received  the  stimulus  to  faith  in  the  years  of 
your  college  course,  I  know  not  where  you  are  to 
find  it.  It  would  be  as  ill-timed  to  emphasize  the 
necessity  of  faith  as  compared  with  patience  as  it 
would  be  to  emphasize  the  necessities  of  theory  as 
compared  with  practice.  Your  dangers  lie  not  in 
the  direction  of  failing  to  understand  the  meaning 


8  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

of  faith  :in(l  ilie  nocossity  of  coiiibining  faith  with 
your  patience.  They  are  all  in  tlu^  direction  of 
inisunrlerstancling  what  is  meant  by  patience,  and 
of  underrating  the  constant  necessity  of  its  exer- 
cise by  the  man  who  would  give  effect  to  his  ideals 
and  his  principles,  to  his  beliefs  in  man  and  in 
God.  He  who  fails  in  this  understanding,  and 
tries  to  exercise  faith  without  patience,  may  wreck 
the  efficiency  of  his  Christian  life,  and  even  the 
life  itself;  just  as  he  who  fails  to  understand  the 
need  of  working  out  his  theories  in  practice,  and 
tries  to  develop  the  former  without  the  latter, 
wrecks  his  professional  success  as  engineer  or 
lawyer,  as  physician  or  man  of  business. 

By  the  word  patience,  as  I  use  it  this  morning, 
I  do  not  mean  primarily  or  chiefly  that  quality 
of  uncomplaining  physical  endurance  with  which 
the  term  is  most  often  associated.  Not  that  I 
would  for  a  moment  undervalue  this  virtue  of 
bearing  evils  without  complaint.  It  is  at  once  a 
mark  of  power  over  one's  self,  and  a  means  of 
power  over  others.  And  yet  this  patient  endur- 
ance of  physical  suffering  is  chiefly  valuable  as 
a  symbol  of  something  higher.  As  the  spirit  is  of 
more  importance  than  the  nerve-fibre,  so  is  spir- 


THE   GREATNESS  OF   PATIENCE  9 

itual  endurance  a  thing  of  greater  importance  than 
the  enduring  of  pliysical  pain.  Patience,  in  its 
highest  sense,  is  this  spiritual  endurance.  It 
means  quiet  determination  in  the  face  of  discour- 
agement. It  means  the  readiness  to  wait  God's 
time  without  doubting  God's  truth. 

It  is  characteristic  of  this  kind  of  patience  that 
it  is  hardest  for  the  best  and  strongest  men,  be- 
cause it  seems  to  involve  a  limitation  of  that  part 
of  their  nature  which  makes  them  best  and  strong- 
est. To  the  man  of  no  faith  and  no  fixity  of  pur- 
pose, moral  disappointments  are  nothing.  To  the 
man  burning  with  zeal  for  God,  they  are  a  darken- 
ing of  the  heavens.  It  was  not  the  half-hearted 
Aaron  who  dashed  the  tables  of  the  law  in  pieces 
when  he  saw  his  people  worshipping  the  golden 
calf,  but  Moses,  the  man  of  God.  The  same  fire 
and  inspiration  which  made  Moses  a  leader,  put 
him,  and  puts  every  man  like  him,  under  a  temp- 
tation to  jeopardize  the  success  of  his  leadership 
by  a  self-centred  haste.  "  If  thou  be  the  Christ, 
cast  thyself  down  from  the  pinnacle  of  the  tem- 
ple." This  was  a  temptation  to  which  Jesus  was 
accessible,  because  of  his  consciousness  of  the 
power  to  achieve  sudden  and  dazzling  results ;  and 


10  BACCALAUREATE   ADDRESSES 

one  which  he  resisted  in  virtne  of  that  yd  higher 
power  to  subordinate  his  personal  ability  and  per- 
sonal glorv  to  tlic  permanent  service  of  the  world. 

But  why  must  tluit  uuin  wlio  sees  farther  than 
his  fellow  nieUj  and  is  conscious  of  possessing 
more  power,  be  under  this  injunction  to  exercise 
patience  ?  Why  shall  he  not  use  his  insight  and 
his  ability  to  gain  quick  results  instead  of  slow 
ones?  Why  do  we  bid  him  wait,  instead  of  in- 
trusting his  s])iritniil  fortunes  to  a  hazard  whose 
issue  he  believes  liimself  able  to  foretell  ? 

In  the  first  place — to  put  the  matter  on  the  low- 
est ground — we  insist  on  the  virtue  of  patience 
because  no  living  man  is  likely  to  be  wise  enough 
or  brilliant  enough  to  dispense  with  the  necessity 
of  using  it.  No  matter  how  unbroken  a  chain  of 
successes  he  may  enjoy,  unforeseen  sources  of  fail- 
ure are  bound  to  arise  at  some  time;  and  only  the 
man  who  has  schooled  himself  to  keep  his  vision 
steady  and  his  faith  unshaken  in  the  midst  of  such 
failure  can  recover  the  lost  ground.  He  who  has 
trained  his  nerves  solely  for  the  stimulus  of  suc- 
cess, has  placed  himself  in  a  position  where  a  sin- 
gle failure  may  wreck  his  whole  life  and  life  work. 

If  ever  there  w^as  a  man  who  by  mental  endow- 


THE  GREATNESS  OF   PATIENCE  U 

ment  and  fortunate  circumstances  seemed  able  to 
dispense  with  the  necessity  of  patience,  it  was  Na- 
poleon. Unrivalled  as  a  general  in  his  day,  and 
perhaps  in  any  other  day,  he  had  a  faith  in  his 
star  which  carried  him  triumphantly  through  fif- 
teen years  of  victory.  But  to  that  faith  he  did  not 
add  patience ;  and  tlirec  years  of  defeat  sufficed  to 
cast  to  the  winds  all  that  fifteen  years  had  won. 
The  individual  successes  had  been  many,  the  in- 
dividual failures  few ;  but  the  net  result  was  ruin. 
Contrast  with  his  career  the  career  of  Frederick 
the  Great  a  half  century  earlier.  Less  eminent  as 
a  general,  surrounded  by  a  more  formidable  and 
persistent  coalition  of  foes,  defeate'd  almost  as 
often  as  he  was  victorious,  he  yet  preserved  his 
tenacity  of  purpose.  Once,  on  the  evening  after 
the  battle  of  Kunnersdorf,  his  endurance  was 
stretched  to  the  very  limit.  The  whole  continent 
was  fighting  against  him.  Through  his  own  fault 
of  judgment,  he  had  lost  a  field  that  was  nearly 
won,  and  lost  it  so  completely  that  scarce  three 
thousand  men  were  left  about  his  standard.  If 
ever  a  man  might  despair,  Frederick  might  well 
have  done  so  then.  His  endurance  which  re- 
mained undaunted  in  this  adversity  was  a  quality 


12  BACCALAURIOATI':   ADDRIISSMS 

wliic'Ii  in  \\\c  tinal  result  counted  for  more  tliiin 
any  military  irenius,  however  brilliant.  The  lesser 
general  sueeeeded  where  the  greater  general  failed, 
l)ecause  the  one  had  that  divine  i^atience  which  the 
other  had  not. 

Take  an  instance  yet  nohler — nol)ler  because 
it  involves  the  character  not  of  one  man,  but  of 
a  whole  people — that  of  Rome  after  the  battle 
of  Canna?.  An  army  representing  the  entire 
strength  of  the  republic  had  been,  sent  into  the 
iield  for  what  seemed  a  final  struggle  against 
Hannibal.  Through  the  use  of  ignoble  arts  of  tlie 
l)olitician,  the  command  of  this  army  had  been 
secured  by  a  man  whose  skill  in  military  affairs 
was  far  from  being  commensurate  with  his  skill 
in  politics.  So  fatally  had  he  mismanaged  his 
battle  that  there  was  left  scarce  a  family  in  Rome 
that  was  not  mourning  the  loss  of  its  best  blood. 
The  younger  officers  among  the  handful  that  es- 
caj^ed  with  their  lives  proposed  that  they  should 
flee  to  foreign  parts;  but  the  unfortunate  general 
showed  that,  whatever  might  be  said  of  his  politi- 
cal and  his  military  career,  he  possessed  the  divine 
spark  of  patience.  Without  excuses  for  failure,  he 
led  his  broken  handful  back  to  Rome;  and  the 


THE  GREATNESS  OP  PATIENCE  13 

members  of  the  Senate,  though  they  had  been  his 
opponents  in  politics,  and  though  they  had  suf- 
fered losses  of  brothers  and  sons  through  his  mis- 
conduct, met  him  with  no  reproach,  but  with  pub- 
lic thanks  "  because  he  had  not  despaired  of  the 
republic."  It  was  on  that  day  that  Rome  showed 
her  right  to  conquer  the  world.  Against  such  pa- 
tience no  obstacle  was  powerful  enough  to  stand. 
But  the  injunction  to  exercise  spiritual  patience 
is  based  on  other  and  higher  reasons  than  those  of 
worldly  wisdom.  Not  only  is  patience  a  surer 
means  of  attaining  success  amid  the  imperfections 
of  human  knowledge  and  the  uncertainties  of 
human  fate  than  intellectual  brilliancy  ever  can 
be,  but  the  successes  which  are  won  through  its  ex- 
ercise are  of  a  higher  character.  The  achievement 
which  comes  through  trial  and  failure  is  nobler  in 
quality  than  that  which  seems  to  come  of  itself. 
Without  patience  we  may  have  individual  deeds 
of  great  splendor,  but  they  stand  as  something 
separate  from  the  doer.  With  patience,  the  deeds 
become  so  inwrought  into  the  character  of  the  man 
that  his  success  or  failure  in  externals  is  a  small 
thing,  as  compared  with  that  success  which  he  has 
achieved  in  himself.     He  is  a  leader  to  be  loved 


14  RACr.M. AUREATE    ADDRESSES 

ami  trnstt'il,  as  well  as  to  be  admired  and  followed. 
r>aek  to  the  days  of  the  ''  imieh-endiiring  divine 
Ulysses,"  this  truth  has  been  recognized.  The 
man  who  can  endure  has  that  element  in  his  life 
Avhieh  makes  him  at  once  a  prince  and  a  god — a 
leader  of  men,  and  a  sharer  of  the  divine  attri- 
butes. He  has  won  a  glory  which  is  independent 
of  changes  of  fortune. 

We  are  often  told  that  the  modern  world  cares 
little  for  these  things;  that  it  worships  success, 
and  success  alone.  Xever  was  there  a  greater  mis- 
take. The  homage  which  the  world  renders  to  suc- 
cess apart  from  character  is  not  worship;  it  is 
something  totallj-  different.  That  success  which 
is  independent  of  character  may  be  admired,  and 
it  may  be  envied;  but  it  does  not  command  that 
element  of  personal  adoration  which  is  the  essen- 
tial feature  in  worship.  The  man  who  succeeds 
in  doing  greater  deeds  than  his  fellow  men,  with- 
out possessing  greater  attributes  of  soul,  may 
receive  the  plaudits  of  a  mob  which  has  no  aspira- 
tions for  anything  better  than  selfish  aggrandize- 
ment; he  can  never  become  the  leader  of  a  nation 
whose  citizens  possess  patriotic  ideals.  When  it 
becomes  true  of  any  country  that  its  public  senti- 


THE  GREATNESS  OF  PATIENCE  15 

ment  cares  for  nothing  but  external  tokens  of 
power,  it  is  the  surest  sign  that  this  people  has 
passed  the  zenith  of  its  course  and  is  hastening  to 
a  decline.  America  has  not  reached  this  stage. 
Our  country  still  aspires  to  be  led  by  men  who 
shall  prove  their  claim  for  leadership,  not  by  con- 
crete material  achievements,  but  by  their  character 
and  their  ideals. 

This  superior  importance  of  character  over 
achievement  has  been  expressed  in  a  hundred  dif- 
ferent ways.  Goethe  puts  it  into  concrete  lan- 
guage when  he  says  that  to  do  something  is  the 
ideal  of  the  philistine,  and  to  be  something  the 
ideal  of  the  gentleman.  St.  Paul  puts  it  into  theo- 
logical language  when  he  speaks  of  the  need  of 
justification  by  faith,  as  something  transcending 
justification  by  works.  Jesus  Christ  puts  it  into 
the  mystical  language  which  is  the  most  complete 
and  truest  expression  of  the  whole,  when  he  says 
that  the  kingdom  of  God  is  in  our  hearts. 

The  success  which  is  thus  wrought  into  a  man's 
character  has  this  further  element  of  greatness, 
that  it  is  a  means  of  help  and  inspiration  to  all 
those  about  him.  It  attracts  them  instead  of  re- 
pelling them.     Mere  brilliancy  or  intellectual  at- 


10  BACCALAUREATE   ADDRESSES 

tainnionl  bv  :in  individual  rarely  has  an  uplifting 
effect  upon  the  |)eople  as  a  whole.  On  the  con- 
trarv,  the  success  which  results  from  power  with- 
out patience  tends  to  place  a  man  apart  from  his 
fellow  men.  He  has  achieved  it  in  isolation;  in 
isolation  he  enjoys  it  while  it  lasts.  That  bril- 
liancy which  is  the  exclusive  privilege  of  the  few 
leads  the  many  to  meet  its  results  with  distrust; 
and  this  distrust  on  the  part  of  the  people  is  met 
with  disdain  on  the  part  of  the  leader.  The  people 
fear  a  brilliant  man  because  they  cannot  follow 
him;  the  brilliant  man  despises  the  people  for  the 
same  reason.  Such  a  man  can  hardly  escape  the 
fate  of  Paracelsus,  who  "  gazed  on  power  till  he 
grew  blind."  Overwhelmed  with  the  importance 
of  his  own  scientific  discoveries,  he  desired  to  see 
the  world  at  once  regenerated  by  his  own  efforts. 
^Mien  men  refused  to  accept  the  quick  regenera- 
tion which  he  i)roposed,  his  first  state  was  one  of 
intolerance ;  his  second  was  one  of  discouragement 
and  of  failure.  The  success  which  he  coveted  was 
to  do  good  to  the  people  in  spite  of  themselves,  by 
a  sudden  miracle  of  power — a  miracle  which  was 
not  forthcoming,  and  which  will  never  be  forth- 
coming to  him  who  knows  not  the  middle  ground 


THE  GREATNESS  OF  PATIENCE  17 

between  the  impatience  of  intolerance  and  the  im- 
patience of  discouragement.  It  is  not  a  man  of 
this  kind  who  can  lead  the  people.  It  is  rather  the 
man  who  is  content  to  win  his  success  through 
failures  and  trials — a  man  of  the  type  of  William 
the  Silent,  of  Washington,  or  of  Lincoln,  De- 
feated in  detail,  these  men  rise  from  each  defeat 
stronger  in  themselves,  and  stronger  in  a  mutual 
understanding  between  themselves  and  their  fol- 
lowers. The  success  of  such  men  is  not  an  indi- 
vidual possession,  but  one  which  is  shared  with 
their  fellow  men.  It  is  success  of  the  kind  whose 
highest  exemplification  is  in  the  New  Testament 
story  of  Him  who  died  for  all,  that  all  might  live. 
Gentlemen  of  the  graduating  class:  l^ever  has 
there  been  a  time  in  the  world's  history  when  these 
lessons  of  patience  have  been  more  needed.  New 
scientific  discoveries,  new  methods  of  economic 
organization,  new  political  opportunities  in  the 
quick  revolution  of  the  world's  kaleidoscope,  have 
put  in  your  hands  a  power  to  use  for  evil  or  for 
good.  There  is  so  much  chance  to  show  what  you 
can  do  that  you  are  in  danger  of  forgetting  the 
need  of  proving  what  you  are.  I  entreat  you 
never  to  let  the  consciousness  of  this  power  lead 


IS  BACCAT.AUREATE  ADDRESSES 

you  to  prefer  the  joy  of  its  exercise  to  the  assur- 
ance of  its  subordiuatiou  to  great  ends.  You  hold 
that  power  as  trustees  for  your  feUow  uien.  Never 
allow  yourselves  to  shape  a  selfish  definition  of 
success  in  whose  creation  and  enjoyment  they  shall 
have  no  share.  True  success  in  politics  or  in  busi- 
ness lies  not  in  tlie  gaining  of  authority,  Lut  in 
the  wise  use  of  authority  as  leaders  of  those  who 
look  to  you  for  guidance.  True  success  in  art  or 
literature  is  not  to  be  sought  simply  in  the  develop- 
ment of  new  ideals,  but  in  the  interpretation  and 
expression  of  those  ideals  in  such  a  way  that  they 
shall  be  a  jiublic  possession.  May  Yale  be  buried 
deep  under  the  sea  if  ever  she  begins  to  teach  her 
men  so  to  define  success  that  it  may  be  purchased 
at  the  price  of  self-centred  isolation !  The  great 
achievements  of  history  are  those  which  have  been 
worked  out  with  others  and  for  others.  This  co- 
operation can  only  be  obtained  at  the  price  of  pa- 
tient waiting.  Real  leadership  belongs  to  the  man 
who  can  patiently  feel  the  needs  and  limitations 
of  other  men,  and  who  has  that  power  of  self- 
renunciation  which  will  enable  him  to  compass 
this  result.  However  much  you  may  be  able  to 
dazzle  the  multitude  or  lead   tlie  multitude,  tlio 


THE  GREATNESS  OF   PATIENCE  19 

respect  of  your  own  conscience,  under  God,  is  the 
one  enduring  possession.  In  patience,  in  the  pro- 
foundest  sense  of  the  word,  shall  you  possess  your 
souls.  Thus,  and  thus  only,  can  you  rise  above 
the  caprices  of  fate  in  achieving  a  character  and 
a  fixity  of  purpose  which  it  is  beyond  the  power 
of  fortune  to  take  away.  Thus,  and  thus  only, 
shall  you  enter  into  the  estate  of  him  who  hath 

"  three  firm  friends,  more  sure  than  day  or  night  ; 
Himself,  his  Maker,  and  the  angel  Death." 


THE  CHRISTIAX  STANDARD  OF  HOXOR 

"  We  are  members  one  of  another." 

Three  hundred  years  ago  the  man  who  left 
college  to  go  o\it  into  active  life  found  a  wide 
range  of  careers  open  before  him.  Xo  social  bar- 
riers or  conventional  restraints  restricted  his 
choice  between  good  and  evil.  If  he  were  bent  on 
nothing  higher  than  personal  pleasure  and  adven- 
ture, he  might  turn  buccaneer  and  sail  for  the 
Spanish  main  on  a  career  of  piracy ;  or  he  might 
become  a  professional  soldier,  and  engage  himself 
for  year  after  year  in  wars  which,  as  then  con- 
ducted, were  little  better  than  piratical ;  or  he 
might  attach  himself  to  the  fortunes  of  some  great 
man,  whose  followers  countenanced  one  another  in 
a  career  of  dissolute  ease.  Any  and  all  of  these 
evil  things  he  could  do  without  forfeiting  his  hope 
of  what  the  world  called  success. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  he  desired  to  live  a  life 

of  usefulness  to  his  fellow  men,  whether  as  min- 

20 


THE  STANDARD  OF   HONOR  21 

ister,  as  statesman,  or  as  scientific  discoverer,  he 
assumed  the  risks — and  serious  risks  they  were — 
of  ending  his  life  in  exile  or  in  martyrdom.  He 
took  his  choice  between  selfishness  without  pen- 
alty, and  unselfishness  without  reward.  He  was 
face  to  face  with  a  parting  of  the  ways ;  a  decision 
as  to  his  life's  purposes  which  was  clearly  defined, 
and  which  when  once  made  was  not  easily  recalled. 
To-day  the  case  is  far  different.  The  college 
graduate  now  enters  a  life  where  the  choice  be- 
tween selfish  and  unselfish  ambitions,  between 
good  and  evil  careers,  is  not  thus  sharply  marked. 
We  live  in  a  world  where  the  man  who  would  be 
successful  in  serving  himself  must  at  the  same 
time  be  occupied  in  serving  others.  We  no  longer 
respect  the  pirate,  the  libertine,  or  the  soldier  of 
fortune.  The  careers  which  appeal  to  ambitious 
men  are  careers  of  large  public  service,  whatever 
may  have  been  the  underlying  motive  with  which 
such  service  was  rendered.  The  successful  en- 
gineer is  the  man  who  builds  bridges  that  will 
carry  traffic  and  designs  machines  that  will  do 
work  for  the  million.  The  successful  physician  is 
the  man  who  has  proved  his  power  to  heal  disease. 
The  successful  minister  is  the  one  who  can  reach 


22  BAt'CALArUEATE   ADDRESSES 

the  wauls  of  tlu)usaii(ls  that  hear  liiiii.  The  suc- 
cessful business  man  is  lie  who  has  proved  his  abil- 
ity to  provide  the  masses  with  the  things  that  they 
need  by  an  efficient  grasp  of  new  and  progressive 
methods.  Even  in  those  careers  where  the  tempta- 
tions of  selfishness  are  greatest,  the  necessity  of 
this  public  service  still  remains  manifest.  The 
highest  ambition  of  the  lawyer  can  be  realized  only 
by  him  who  lives  to  conserve  the  social  structure 
instead  of  undermining  it.  The  highest  honor  as 
a  political  leader  falls  only  to  the  man  who  has 
been  loyal  to  his  associates  and  to  his  ideals. 

The  fact  that  we  have  been  able  to  secure  this 
degree  of  coincidence  between  selfishness  and  un- 
selfishness is  the  most  important  characteristic  of 
modern  civilization.  That  we  have  ceased  to  re- 
spect the  robber  and  to  burn  the  minister  is  a 
central  historic  fact  which  shows  that  we  have  ad- 
vanced beyond  the  savage  state.  The  gain  in  sci- 
entific knowledge  and  material  comfort  which  is 
sometimes  thought  to  constitute  the  essence  of  civ- 
ilization is  hardly  more  than  an  incidental  conse- 
quence of  this  development  of  ideas. 

This  civilized  public  sentiment  is  a  safeguard 
against  all  unbridled  license.     It  takes  away  from 


THE  STANDARD  OF  HONOR  23 

every  one  of  us  the  temptation  to  pursue  those 
careers  which  a  few  centuries  ago  were  regarded 
as  the  most  natural  occupations  of  a  gentleman. 
But  in  thus  protecting  us  against  the  grosser  forms 
of  temptation,  it  exposes  us  to  new  and  more  subtle 
dangers.  The  very  fact  that  the  successful  pur- 
suit of  selfish  ambition  compels  a  man  to  do  so 
much  for  others  leads  many  of  our  younger  men  to 
think  that  they  can  trust  to  selfish  ambition  as  an 
underlying  principle  of  all  their  public  activity; 
and  in  their  professional  relations  it  leads  them 
to  disregard  those  finer  principles  of  honor  which 
are  the  consummate  flower  not  only  of  chivalry 
but  of  Christianity. 

Life  is  a  game  whose  rules  have  been  drafted 
and  redrafted  by  successive  generations,  until  the 
penalties  for  their  violation  generally  outweigh 
any  probable  advantages  which  such  violation 
might  give.  Under  these  circumstances  the  out- 
ward acts  of  the  unprincipled  or  selfish  player  tend 
to  approximate  more  and  more  nearly  to  those  of 
the  Christian  gentleman.  This  conformity  of  out- 
ward acts  may  be  so  close  as  at  times  to  tempt  the 
gentleman  to  forget  that  he  is  a  gentleman  and 
lead  him  to  play  in  less  strict  conformity  to  the 


24  BACCALArRKATM    ADDRESSES 

rulrs  wlioii  lie  hclicvrs  tliiit  llic  pcimltv  for  llioir 
violatiou  cjumct  lie  iiiijioscd.  Ii  iiuiy  even  lead 
tlic  Christian  to  forgot  that  he  is  a  Christian,  and 
encourage  him  to  conform  his  standard  of  conduct 
to  that  of  his  fellow  contestants.  But  the  differ- 
ence of  spirit  remains  the  same ;  and  if  we  allow 
our  standard  thus  to  be  lowered  the  best  possibili- 
ties of  life  are  at  an  end. 

For  selfishness,  though  it  will  accomplish  much 
for  society,  will  not  accomplish  everything.  There 
remains  a  need  for  the  acceptance  by  the  members 
of  society  of  self-imposed  obligations  going  beyond 
the  strict  letter  of  the  rules  or  purview  of  the 
umpires.  The  greater  the  liberty  which  a  man  en- 
joys in  his  social  and  professional  life,  the  more 
necessary  is  it  for  his  own  character,  for  the  in- 
terests of  his  fellow  men,  and  for  the  permanence 
of  our  civilization  as  a  whole,  that  he  should  rec- 
ognize these  wider  obligations  which  no  authority 
can  enforce  except  his  own  conscience.  The  larger 
his  power  and  the  newer  the  field  in  which  he 
works,  the  more  imperative  is  the  necessity  that 
he  should  treat  life  as  a  trust. 

It  is,  I  think,  the  distinguishing  characteristic 
of  a  gentleman  that  he  accepts  self-imposed  obli- 


THE   STANDARD  OF  HONOR  25 

gations.  Distinctions  of  dress,  of  speech,  or  of 
manners,  however  important,  are  but  superficial 
things  as  compared  with  this  underlying  spirit. 
And  it  is  this  readiness  to  accept  self-imposed  ob- 
ligations which  constitutes  the  fundamental  char- 
acteristic of  a  Christian.  The  only  difference  in 
the  meaning  of  the  two  words  is  that  the  gentle- 
man may  regard  these  obligations  as  resulting 
from  his  duties  to  a  restricted  class,  and  capable 
of  acceptance  only  by  that  class ;  while  a  Christian 
receives  them  as  a  trust  on  behalf  of  the  commu- 
nity as  a  w^hole,  and  has  faith  to  believe  that  as 
time  goes  on  the  whole  people  will  be  capable  of 
thus  accepting  them. 

Of  course  there  are  other  conceptions  of  Chris- 
tianity which  are  widely  prevalent.  Some  men — - 
less  common,  fortunately,  to-day  than  they  were  a 
century  or  two  ago — judge  a  Christian  by  his 
creed.  This  is  like  judging  a  gentleman  by  his 
dress.  Some  judge  him  by  his  church  affiliations. 
This  is  like  judging  a  gentleman  by  the  society  in 
which  he  moves.  Some — and  to-day  a  yet  more 
numerous  class — judge  him  by  his  outward  acts. 
This  is  like  judging  a  gentleman  by  his  accom- 
plishments.    But  the  spirit  of  Christianity  goes 


26  H.UX'ALAL'HEATl':   ADDKllSSKS 

deeper  than  all  this.  J^ct  mo  quotx?  the  words  of 
a  man  who  hail  a  good  understanding  of  the  scope 
of  true  Christianity,  if  ever  there  was  one. 
"  Though  1  have  the  gift  of  prophecy,  and  under- 
stand all  niystorios  and  all  knowledge,  and  though 
1  have  all  faith,  so  that  I  could  remove  mountains, 
and  have  not  charity,  I  am  nothing.  And  though 
I  bestow  all  my  goods  to  feed  the  poor,  and  though 
I  give  my  body  to  be  burned,  and  have  not  charity, 
it  profiteth  me  nothing."  Kot  good  works  is  it 
that  constitute  Christianity,  but  the  spirit  which 
"  beareth  all  things,  believetli  all  things,  hoj^eth 
all  things,  endureth  all  things." 

I  said  a  moment  ago  that  the  spirit  of  a  gentle- 
man might  be  more  restricted  in  its  spupathies 
than  the  spirit  of  a  Christian.  But  I  believe  that 
the  time  is  at  hand  when  the  two  must  more  and 
more  definitely  coincide  if  the  modern  civilized 
world  is  to  maintain  its  institutions  and  its  morals. 

One  of  the  distinctive  things  about  the  Chris- 
tian spirit  has  been  its  essentially  democratic 
character.  ]!^ot  for  a  class  and  not  for  a  tribe,  but 
for  the  whole  community,  were  its  ideals  framed 
and  its  obligations  accepted.  Throughout  the 
Middle  Ages  the  church,  in  spite  of  its  hierarchi- 


THE  STANDARD  OF  HONOR  27 

cal  organization,  was  the  great  democratic  body 
— the  one  place  in  the  social  order  where  the  poor 
man  had  his  chance.  When  the  church  was  thus 
democratic  and  civil  society  was  not,  it  was  in- 
evitable that  there  should  be  a  distinction  between 
those  civil  or  social  virtues  which  were  arranged 
within  an  aristocratic  framework  and  those 
broader  ideas  of  virtue  on  which  the  church  laid 
stress.  In  the  days  when  civil  order  was  upheld 
by  a  few  men  who  could  fight  it  was  inevitable 
that  personal  courage  and  other  qualities  essential 
to  a  ruling  class  in  a  lawless  society  should  be  un- 
duly emphasized  in  the  moral  standards  of  that 
class;  that  the  man  who  possessed  these  qualities 
should  be  regarded  as  a  gentleman,  even  though 
he  failed  to  possess  other  things  which  were 
equally  important  in  the  community  as  a  whole. 
In  these  rude  days  the  church,  working  for  a  peo- 
ple who  were  unable  to  fight,  laid  relatively 
greater  emphasis  on  the  more  passive  virtues  of 
obedience,  of  forbearance,  and  of  peaceful  love. 

But  with  the  coming  of  democracy  in  the  po- 
litical as  well  as  the  spiritual  world,  the  historic 
reason  for  this  distinction  is  done  away.  Where 
political  power  falls  into  the  hands  of  all  men,  wc 


28  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

fan  no  longer  let  the  possession  of  one  group  of 
(liialities  condone  the  absence  of  others.  No  man 
is  henceforth  high  enough  to  allow  the  practice  of 
jiolitical  virtue  to  excuse  the  habitual  violation  of 
person;!  1  morals,  nor  is  any  henceforward  low 
enough  to  allow  a  traditional  creed  of  personal 
morals,  inherited  from  social  conditions  of  the 
past,  to  justify  his  non-acceptance  of  political  obli- 
gations. The  people  as  a  body  cannot  rest  con- 
tent with  the  practice  of  those  personal  virtues  of 
older  times  which  did  well  enough  when  they  were 
Inif  the  subjects  of  a  ruling  class.  They  must 
learn  to  accept  trusts.  As  the  extension  of  indus- 
trial and  political  power  gives  them  wider  discre- 
tion in  their  conduct  they  must  charge  themselves 
with  self-imposed  obligations  to  a  commensurate 
degree.  The  Christian  must  be  in  the  best  sense 
of  the  word  a  gentleman. 

To  such  a  high  and  broad  conception  of  Chris- 
tianity you  are  called.  On  the  men  of  your  gen- 
eration rests  the  duty  of  promoting  in  your  own 
life  and  that  of  others  the  acceptance  of  a  Chris- 
tian faith  which  rises  beyond  the  bounds  of  creeds 
or  organizations  or  good  works  and  which  will 
make  vou  members  of  a  church  universal. 


THE  STANDARD  OF   HONOR  29 

Gentlemen  of  the  graduating  class:  These  obli- 
gations which  rest  upon  the  men  of  your  age  as 
a  body  rest  with  special  heaviness  upon  you. 

Yale  was  founded  by  Puritans — that  is,  by  men 
who  understood  the  character  of  life  as  a  trust.  It 
has  from  the  first  been  national  and  democratic  in 
its  sympathies.  It  has  trained  generation  after 
generation  of  men  who  recognized  their  duty, 
not  to  any  single  class  or  locality,  but  to  their  fel- 
low men  as  a  body.  Of  these  traditions  you  have 
enjoyed  the  benefit.  Slight  indeed  has  been  the 
effect  of  your  college  course  if  it  has  not  taken 
you  outside  of  yourselves  and  into  a  broader  and 
more  Christian  atmosphere  of  loyalty  to  large 
ideals.  God  forbid  that  we  should  on  this  account 
seem  self-righteous,  or  believe  that  our  spirit  of 
Christian  democracy  is  more  perfect  than  it  really 
is.  It  has  faults  and  weaknesses  and  distortions 
enough  to  guard  us  against  any  such  ill-timed 
pride.  But  with  all  the  faults  that  can  be  reck- 
oned up  against  it,  it  yet  remains  a  priceless  jewel ; 
something  whose  influence  in  our  education  and  in 
our  life  goes  far  beyond  the  worth  of  any  mere 
book  learning  or  technical  knowledge.  It  will  not 
make  you  less  active  in  the  work  of  your  several 


:?0  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

fallings,  or  less  ambitious  of  success  in  the  lines 
that  you  shall  choose.  But  it  will  at  critical  points 
infuse  into  this  work  a  spirit  which  will  make  it 
a  means  of  service  to  your  fellows  and  of  progress 
to  the  race;  and  it  will  so  order  this  ambition  that 
its  attainment  will  not  be  staked  upon  the  pre- 
carious chances  of  success  or  failure  for  the  mo- 
ment. If  you  have  learned  its  lessons,  your  con- 
ception of  life  will  be  so  large  that  you  can  rise 
above  those  events  which  the  world  counts  failure, 
but  which  are  really  tests  of  endurance  for  the  true 
hero.  If  we  can  carry  into  our  work  a  readiness 
to  value  men  as  men,  independent  of  their  external 
surroundings;  an  intense  devotion  to  things  out- 
side of  ourselves ;  and,  above  all  else,  a  habit  of 
looking  at  life  as  a  measure  to  be  filled  instead  of 
a  cup  to  be  drained  ;  then  shall  we  realize  our  high- 
est possibilities  for  our  country,  for  humanity, 
and  for  the  progress  of  God's  kingdom. 


THE    TEMPTATION    IN    THE 
WILDERNESS 

"  For  we  have  not  an  high  priest  which  cannot  be  touched 
with  the  feeling  of  our  infirmities;  but  was  in  all  points 
tempted  like  as  we  are,  yet  without  sin." 

In  reading  the  account  of  the  temptation  in  the 
wilderness  we  can  hardly  help  being  impressed 
and  overawed  by  the  way  in  which  it  anticipates 
our  own  experience  when  we  first  go  out  into 
active  life.  The  higher  each  man's  powers  and 
possibilities  are,  the  more  is  he  likely  to  have  to 
face  the  whole  series  of  temptations  which  fell  to 
the  lot  of  the  Master  nineteen  centuries  earlier. 
Materialism,  ambition,  self-exaltation — these  are 
the  forms  under  which  evil  is  going  to  set  its  most 
subtle  and  dangerous  snares  for  our  feet.  The 
first  of  the  three  temptations  comes  to  us  all  alike. 
The  second  will  sooner  or  later  come  to  the  ma- 
jority of  those  who  are  here  to-day.  The  third 
comes  to  relatively  few;  but  those  few  are  the 
men  of  rare  endowment,  who  have  most  of  the 
power  of  God  in  their  own  hearts. 
31 


32  BACCALAUREATi:   ADDRESSES 

You  are  iioiuii;  out  into  a  wilderness.  The  temp- 
tations Avliicli  von  are  to  face  may  not  be  any 
harder  to  resist  than  those  to  which  you  have  be- 
come accustomed  during  your  college  life.  But 
you  have  to  meet  them  with  less  support  from 
those  about  you.  In  any  good  college  a  man  finds 
himself  part  of  a  community  in  which  each  takes 
his  share  of  others'  burdens.  The  standards  of 
that  community  may  not  always  be  ideally  high ; 
but,  such  as  they  are,  each  man  helps  his  fellows 
to  live  up  to  them.  Especially  is  this  true  of  a 
college  like  Yale ;  and  the  help  which  you  have 
gained  from  your  associations  here  should  stand 
}ou  in  good  stead  when  you  come  to  face  the  great 
temptations  by  yourselves.  But  the  pressure  of 
these  temptations  has  only  been  deferred :  it  has 
not  been  avoided.  You  have  them  before  you,  and 
you  have  to  face  them  alone. 

The  first  that  meets  you  is  that  of  materialism. 
"  If  thou  be  the  Christ,  command  that  these  stones 
be  made  bread."  For  years  to  come  this  will  be 
dinned  into  your  ears  from  every  side.  "  Of  what 
use  is  a  college  education,"  men  will  tell  you, 
"  except  as  it  enables  you  to  make  a  living  ? " 
"  Of  what  use  are  ideal  standards,"  the  press  will 


THE  TEMPTATION  33 

saj,  "  as  compared  with  the  hard  necessities  of 
daily  life  ?  "  You  will  probably  be  in  a  position 
where  you  will  feel  these  hard  necessities.  The 
need  of  money  comes  home  with  vastly  increased 
force  to  the  man  who  has  to  earn  that  money  him- 
self; and  it  requires  a  hard  struggle  for  him  to 
retain  his  ideals  amid  the  pressure  of  immediate 
physical  want.  Still  harder  is  it  for  him  to  retain 
his  ideal  where  those  about  him  are  so  engaged  in 
the  winning  of  bread  that  success  in  this  seems  to 
them  the  one  test  of  power  which  marks  a  man  as 
stronger  than  his  fellows. 

Far  be  it  from  me  to  say  anything  against  the 
value  of  this  struggle  for  self-support.  It  is  a  hard 
taskmaster,  which  keeps  you  from  dreaming.  It 
furnishes  a  stimulus  which  brings  out  some  of 
your  best  powers  in  a  way  in  which  they  never 
could  be  developed  otherwise.  Modern  business 
competition  has  been  so  arranged  that  in  serving 
himself  each  man,  on  the  whole,  tends  to  serve 
others.  But  when,  in  the  stress  of  this  effort,  a 
man  forgets  that  there  is  anything  higher — when 
he  ceases  to  regard  it  as  a  means  for  the  ordering 
of  society,  and  makes  it  an  end  in  itself, — then  he 
destroys  the  possibility  of  what  is  best  within  him ; 


34  BACX:^ALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

and  till'  ixroatiM'  wore  those  possibilities,  the  larger 
is  the  loss  to  the  world.  It  is  written,  "  Man  shall 
not  live  by  bread  alone."  If  you  have  it  in  you 
to  give  men  something  more  than  bread,  be  sure 
that  any  failure  to  account  for  the  added  talents 
will  be  heavily  reckoned  against  you  when  the  final 
account  is  nuule  up.  There  is  no  more  pervasive 
danger  than  the  danger  of  thinking  that  the  money 
standard  is  everything;  that  ability  and  business 
honor,  and  love  and  marriage,  are  all  marketable 
commodities.  The  stress  of  hunger  may  excuse 
the  wrong.  The  blinding  influences  of  modern  life 
may  explain  the  commonness  of  the  error.  But 
no  explanation  can  condone  the  error  and  no  ex- 
cuse can  undo  the  wrong. 

For  the  man  who  has  outgro\vn  this  first  set 
of  temptations  toward  materialism,  and  who  has 
learned  to  make  a  living  without  sinking  all  his 
ideals  therein,  there  waits  a  more  subtle  set  of 
temptations — the  temptations  of  ambition.  If 
you  have  passed  successfully  the  tests  of  the  first 
hard  years  of  life  in  the  office  or  the  shop,  you  will 
find  wide  fields  of  success  opening  before  you. 
Where  will  you  seek  that  success?  Is  it  to  be  in 
the  accumulation  of  a  large  fortune,  no  longer  as 


THE  TEMPTATION  35 

a  means  of  physical  comfort,  but  as  a  means  of  in- 
fluencing the  actions  of  others?  Shall  it  be  in 
social  position  among  your  fellow  men  ?  Shall  it 
be  in  political  office  and  in  the  conduct  of  the  af- 
fairs of  the  nation  ?  Each  of  these  ambitions  has 
in  it  much  that  is  noble.  The  millionaire,  the 
social  leader,  the  political  chieftain,  all  have  in 
their  hands  enormous  power  for  good.  It  is  just 
because  of  the  existence  of  this  power  that  the 
danger  comes  close  home,  and  comes  home  closest 
to  the  very  strongest  among  us,  of  subordinating 
all  other  ends  to  these  immediate  objects.  The 
strong  man,  if  he  will  worship  money,  is  offered 
the  prize  of  industrial  power;  if  he  will  worship 
office,  the  prizes  of  politics  lie  before  his  hand. 
Whether  they  are  more  surely  gained  in  this  way 
than  any  other  I  shall  not  undertake  to  say;  but 
certain  it  is  that  the  devil  will  be  at  hand  to  show 
you  overwhelming  reasons  to  believe  that  that  is 
the  only  way  in  which  they  can  be  gained — that 
you  can  commune  with  the  object  of  your  wor- 
ship only  by  falling  down  at  its  feet,  and  forget- 
ting that  there  is  any  other  god. 

What  answer  did  Christ  give  to  this  proposal? 
Not  that  of  the  ascetic  who  undervalues  the  world. 


36  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

The  C'liristian  knows  the  worth  of  worKlly  intlu- 
ence  just  as  well  as  he  knows  the  worth  of  worldly 
industry.  But  the  man  whose  gjos  go  not  beyond 
this  intlueuce  has  sinned  against  the  Holy  Ghost. 
It  is  written,  ''  Thou  shalt  worship  the  Lord  thy 
God,  and  him  only  shalt  thou  serve."  Some  day 
you  will  come  face  to  face  with  this  choice,  at  a 
time  when  it  will  determine  the  outcome  of  your 
whole  life.  Will  you  fall  down  and  worship  the 
devil  for  the  sake  of  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  world  ? 
If  you  by  your  daily  thoughts  and  your  habits  of 
action  prepare  to  answer  this  question  wrongly, 
then  you  may  perhaps  gain  the  whole  world — or 
perhaps  not,  for  it  takes  a  strong  man  to  hold  the 
devil  to  his  promises.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  you 
prepare  to  answer  this  question  aright,  then  you 
may  lose  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  world,  or  you 
may  gain  them — and  it  makes  no  real  difference 
which.  Christ  on  Palm  Sunday,  with  all  the  fickle 
multitude  falling  down  before  him,  was  not  one 
whit  the  greater  than  the  same  Christ  five  days 
after,  when  the  multitude  were  crying  against  him, 
when  his  very  friends  shrank  away  in  fear,  and 
when  he  half  doubted  lest  his  own  God  had  for- 
saken him. 


THE  TEMPTATION  37 

But  there  is  yet  another  temptation,  less  uni- 
versal than  either  of  these  named,  but  to  him  for 
whom  it  comes  yet  more  difficult  to  resist. 

It  is  an  interesting  thing  to  note  that  the  order 
of  temptations  is  different  in  the  two  accounts 
which  have  been  handed  down  to  us.  Matthew 
makes  as  the  culmination  of  the  whole  the  tempta- 
tion to  worship  the  devil  in  order  that  Christ  may 
receive  the  kingdoms  of  the  world.  Luke  the  phy- 
sician finds  a  more  profoundly  true  climax  in 
another  impulse,  less  easy  for  the  multitude  to  un- 
derstand but  harder  for  the  leader  of  the  multitude 
to  resist.  "  If  thou  be  the  Christ,  cast  thyself 
down  from  the  pinnacle  of  the  temple."  This  is 
no  common  temptation;  no  vulgar  craving  for 
bread  to  satisfy  hunger ;  no  equally  vulgar,  though 
more  intellectual,  desire  for  authority  over  one's 
fellows.  It  is  the  desire  of  the  strong  man,  con- 
scious of  his  power,  to  assert  that  power  in  the  face 
of  all  nature.  To  do  something  out  of  the  common 
run  of  work,  something  whose  possibilities  have 
been  unrealized  by  the  vulgar  mind — this  is  the 
dream  which  all  great  men  cherish,  and  to  which 
some  of  them  subordinate  everything  else.  To 
dazzle  the  world  by  campaigns  like  those  of  ISTapo- 


aG95i79 


38  BACCALAUKKATI':   ADDREvSSES 

Icon,  by  acbievcments  in  literal uro  liko  tliosc  of 
Goethe;  to  compass  the  almost  miraculous  discov- 
eries which  have  awaited  the  pioneers  in  explora- 
tion and  science — these  are  prizes  to  attract  the 
ambition  and  unsteady  tlio  judgment  of  any 
man.  And  ev(>n  auumg  th(>s(>  who  do  not  de- 
lude themselves  with  the  belief  that  they  arc 
set  apart  from  the  common  lot,  the  temptation 
to  sacrifice  all  other  considerations  to  those  of 
professional  ambition,  and  to  sink  the  man  in 
the  achievement,  comes  witli  a  force  wellnigh  irre- 
sistible. 

And  what  is  the  answer  when  this  temptation  is 
suggested  ?  "  Jesus  said  unto  him,  It  is  written. 
Thou  shalt  not  tempt  the  Lord  thy  God."  It  was 
just  because  he  had  God's  power  and  God's  spirit 
in  him  that  he  felt  the  ability  to  dazzle  men  by  his 
achievements  and  was  exposed  to  the  temptation 
which  this  ability  carries  with  it.  But  the  man 
w^ho  subordinates  himself  to  his  achievements  and 
who,  in  the  greatness  of  the  expression  of  the 
power,  loses  his  sense  of  personal  responsibility, 
has  used  the  attributes  of  divinity  to  despoil  him- 
self irreparably  of  the  substance.  It  is  not  enough 
for  a  man  to  be  greater  than  his  appetites  and 


THE  TEMPTATION  39 

greater  than  bis  ambitions;  be  must  be  greater 
tban  bis  works. 

This  is  not  an  easy  idea  to  grasp ;  but  it  is  a  ter- 
ribly important  one.  Paul,  Augustine,  and  Lu- 
ther have  in  their  several  ways  tried  to  express  it 
in  the  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith.  Goethe, 
in  his  Wilhelm  Meister,  has  given  it  form  by  say- 
ing that  it  is  the  philistine's  ideal  to  do  some- 
thing; the  ideal  of  the  true  nobleman  is  to  be 
something.  It  is  not  the  startling  deeds  that 
make  the  man,  but  the  character  which  is  be- 
hind them.  A  man  who  is  over-anxious  to  accom- 
plish specific  results,  however  noble,  who  has  fixed 
his  whole  heart  thereon  and  his  whole  purpose 
therein,  has  fallen  short  of  the  full  conception  of 
the  Christian  life.  "  The  kingdom  of  God  cometh 
not  with  observation."  The  greatest  things  that  a 
man  can  do  are  quite  as  likely  to  result  from  his 
failures  as  from  his  successes.  He  who  sets  his 
ambition  on  the  actual  accomplishment  of  things 
which  he  can  see  and  understand  places  himself  at 
the  mercy  of  chance.  For  the  sake  of  some  good 
that  he  may  or  may  not  realize  he  abandons  those 
habits  of  mind  and  qualities  of  heart  which  do 
good  every  day,  and  perhaps  most  good  of  all  when 


40  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

their  effect  is  wholly  unconscious  to  Lim  that  ex- 
ercises it.  What  is  marked  out  as  the  character- 
istic of  the  righteous  in  the  day  of  judgment  i  It 
is  not  that  they  have  followed  creeds ;  it  is  not  that 
they  have  kept  laws ;  it  is  not  even  that  they  have 
achieved  mighty  works.  It  is  that  they  have  done 
more  than  they  knew.  "  Then  shall  the  righteous 
say,  Lord,  when  saw  we  thee  .  .  .  sick  and  in 
prison,  and  ministered  unto  thee  ?  "  With  each 
day  of  your  lives  and  with  each  broadening  of  your 
experience  this  truth  will  come  home  to  you  with 
added  force:  that  a  man's  value  to  the  world  lies 
not  in  the  things  which  he  sees  at  the  time,  nor 
even  in  those  which  the  world  sees  at  the  time ;  but 
in  those  innumerable  movements  set  at  work  by  his 
character — for  evil  if  this  be  evil,  for  good  if  this 
be  good  —  working  themselves  out  in  ways  un- 
known and  not  to  be  fully  revealed  until  the  last 
day. 

Gentlemen  of  the  graduating  class:  We  need 
these  teachings  to-day  more  than  ever  before. 
More  than  ever  do  we  need  to  take  to  our  own 
hearts  the  lessons  of  Christ's  temptation  in  the 
w^ildemess  in  each  of  its  several  forms.  The 
world  to-day  is  full   of  dazzling  possibilities  in 


THE  TEMPTATION  41 

every  direction.     To  him  who  is  tempted  by  things 
material  there  is  a  keener  struggle  for  possession 
than  our  fathers  knew,  with  more  wealth  at  the 
end  and  infinitely  more  possibilities  of  use  of  that 
wealth.     To  him  who  has  set  his  heart  on  social 
distinction  and  fame  there  is  in  modern  society, 
whether  industrial  or  political,  a  more  highly  or- 
ganized activity  than  in  any  previous  age ;  larger 
masses  of  men  to  be  moved,  and  more  inspiring 
lines  in  which  to  move  them.    To  him  who  despises 
the  vulgar  accessories  of  wealth  or  of  power  there 
are  wider  chances  than  ever  before  for  the  exercise 
of  that  power  in  scientific  discovery  or  in  any  of 
the  other  forms  of  achievement  which  shall  last 
when  the  men  and  the  fortunes   about  us   have 
crumbled  into  dust.     The  theatre  of  life,  as  you 
view  it  to-day,  offers  on  a  grander  scale  than  ever 
before  profit  to  the  manager,  fame  to  the  actor, 
and  inspiration  to  the  dramatist.     Not  since  the 
age  of  Queen  Elizabeth  have  such  possibilities  of 
enterprise  and  discovery  faced  the  strong  men  of 
the  nation.     It  is  for  you  to  decide  whether  you 
use  these  opportunities  for  the  sake  of  what  you 
can  gain  from  them  in  wealth  or  power  and  glory, 
or  whether  you  will  accept  them  as  trusts,  and  put 


42  RACCALAUItEATK  ADDRESSES 

your  life  into  the  iK-rfiiniiaiKv  of  the  trust.  What 
dangers  await  yon  in  the  former  career,  even  if 
your  powers  be  great  and  your  ideals  high,  let  the 
disgrace  of  Raleigh  and  the  yet  deejier  disgrace  of 
Bacon  serve  to  testify.  What  unknown  and  un- 
seen influences  may  grow  out  of  your  quiet  ac- 
ceptance of  trust  you  may  learn  from  the  history 
of  the  Puritans — despised  often  and  rejected  in 
high  places,  whose  spirit  nevertheless  grew  irre- 
sistibly stronger  and  whose  failures,  as  long  as 
they  remained  true  to  their  trust,  were  not  so  much 
failures  as  foundations  of  success.  When  Eliot 
went  to  the  Tower  it  placed  a  Hampden  in  the 
field.  When  Hampden  rode  broken-hearted  to  his 
death  his  work  was  taken  up  by  a  Cromwell,  with 
strength  enough  behind  him  and  in  him  to  shape 
a  nation's  history.  It  is  not  from  personal  ambi- 
tion, even  in  its  most  refined  form,  but  from  self-  ^ 
subordination,  that  the  Cromwells  and  the  Lin- 
colns  come — men  from  the  people,  holding  their 
power  in  trust,  and  subordinating  themselves  to 
God's  plan  as  they  see  it,  even  as  Jesus  thus  sub- 
ordinated himself  and  made  his  life  and  death 
alike  a  means  of  working  out  a  world's  salvation. 
If  vour  education  is  wortli  anvtliinir,  and  if  your 


I 


THE  TEMPTATION  43 

Christianity  is  worth  anything,  let  it  teach  you 
thus  to  live  for  the  people ;  not  to  go  into  life  for 
the  sake  of  what  you  can  get  out  of  it  in  wealth 
and  influence  and  the  accomplishment  of  any  of 
those  things  by  which  the  world  measures  success 
— but  to  take  life  for  what  you  can  put  into  it,  to 
be  a  part  of  the  world  about  you  and  subordinate 
your  wants  and  ambitions  to  its  needs  and  pur- 
poses. Thus  can  you  make  yourselves  indepen- 
dent of  the  accidents  of  life ;  thus  can  you  have  the 
assurance  that,  whether  in  success  or  in  failure,  in 
life  or  in  death,  ye  are  Christ's,  and  Christ  is 
God's. 


THE    SPIRIT   OF   DEVOTION 

"And  David  longed,  and  said,  Oh  that  one  would  give  me 
to  drink  of  the  wat^r  of  the  well  of  Bethlehem,  which  is  by 
the  gate! 

"And  the  three  mighty  men  brake  through  the  host  of 
the  Philistines  and  drew  water  out  of  the  well  of  Bethlehem , 
that  was  by  the  gate,  and  brought  it  to  David:  neverthe- 
less he  would  not  drink  thereof,  but  poured  it  out  unto 
the  Lord. 

"And  he  said,  Be  it  far  from  mc,  O  Lord,  that  I  should 
do  this:  is  not  this  the  blood  of  men  that  went  in  jeopardy 
of  their  lives?    Therefore  he  would  not  drink  it." 

Judged  by  material  standards,  this  is  a  tale  of 
folly  from  beginning  to  end.  It  was  foolish  for 
David  to  utter  his  wish ;  it  was  doubly  foolish  for 
his  captains  to  risk  their  lives  to  compass  it;  it 
was  trebly  foolish  for  him  to  waste  the  gift  which 
had  been  won  at  so  much  risk. 

I  do  not  mean  that  all  who  read  the  story  would 
criticise  it  in  this  way.  In  an  episode  like  this, 
we  instinctively  feel  that  there  is  something  which 
makes  such  criticism  inadequate  and  impertinent. 
But  when  we  are  dealing,  not  with  some  excep- 
tional  matter   of   ancient   history,   but  with  this 

44 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  DEVOTION  45 

every-day  world  of  the  twentieth  century,  and  are 
vahung  little  deeds  of  heroism  instead  of  great 
ones,  we  are  prone  to  use  material  standards,  and 
call  them  by  the  specious  name  of  common-sense. 
We  are  apt  to  judge  work  by  its  definite  and 
measurable  results;  to  make  these  results  the  mo- 
tive of  service  and  the  criterion  of  success ;  and  to 
condemn  as  misplaced  sentiment  anything  which 
sacrifices  or  risks  a  tangible  chance  of  physical 
comfort  and  security  for  an  intangible  manifesta- 
tion of  loyalty  or  devotion.  Amid  much  that  is 
good  in  our  twentieth  century  spirit,  this  over- 
valuation of  material  enjoyment  and  of  tangible 
success  constitutes  a  grave  danger.  All  the 
achievements  of  modern  science  and  of  modern 
democracy  will  be  worth  little  if,  in  the  long  run, 
they  teach  people  to  regard  knowledge  for  the  sake 
of  the  return  which  it  will  bring,  and  to  measure 
success  in  life  by  the  concrete  results  with  which 
men  can  credit  themselves. 

I  am  not  going  to  make  this  material  view  of 
life  the  subject  of  argument  or  criticism.  I  am 
going  to  call  your  attention  to  the  fact  that  we  do 
not  really  hold  it;  and  that  when  we  allow  our- 
selves to  be  carried  on  with  the  current  of  popular 


46  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

jmlgiiieut  so  as  to  pretend  that  we  hold  it,  we  are 
letting  the  best  side  of  our  own  nature  be  suji- 
pressed,  and  our  best  possibilities  of  personal 
growth  and  public  service  be  stunted  and  withered. 
I  do  not  believe  that  there  is  a  single  man  in 
this  audience  who  values  life  primarily  as  a  means 
of  securing  comfort.  We  value  it  as  a  field  of  ac- 
tion. We  care  for  the  doing  of  things.  Signal 
achievement  in  itself  appeals  to  our  imagination 
and  interest.  We  admire  Xansen  because  he  suc- 
ceeded in  getting  so  much  nearer  the  Xorth  Pole 
than  anybody  ever  did  before  him ;  we  do  not  ad- 
mire him  in  the  least  for  his  weak  efforts  to  justify 
his  expedition  on  the  basis  of  its  scientific  results. 
A  man  who  tries  to  go  to  the  Xorth  Pole  is  en- 
gaged in  a  glorious  play,  which  justifies  more  risk 
and  more  expenditure  of  life  than  would  be  war- 
ranted for  a  few  miserable  entomological  speci- 
mens, however  remote  from  the  place  where  they 
had  been  previously  found.  It  is  of  far  less  mate- 
rial use  to  go  to  the  Xorth  Pole  than  to  raise 
a  hundred  thousand  bushels  of  wheat;  but  every 
man  of  you,  if  he  had  the  choice  between  going 
to  the  Xorth  Pole  and  raising  a  hundred  thou- 
sand bushels  of  wheat,  would  take  the  former. 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  DEVOTION  47 

Turn  back  over  the  pages  of  history  to  the 
stories  which  have  most  moved  men's  hearts,  and 
what  are  they  ?  They  are  stories  of  action,  deeds 
of  daring,  where  the  risk  habitually  outweighed 
the  chance  of  practical  results.  Nay,  the  most  in- 
spiring of  them  all  are  often  manifestations  of 
hopeless  bravery,  where  the  likelihood  of  success 
was  absolutely  nothing.  When  we  read  of  the 
soldiers  of  Gustavus  Adolphus's  regiment  at  Lut- 
zen,  who  after  the  loss  of  their  king  stood  firm  in 
the  ranks  until  the  line  of  dead  was  as  straight  and 
complete  as  had  been  the  line  of  the  living  on  dress 
parade;  when  we  hear  of  the  Cumberland  at 
Hampton  Roads,  waging  the  hopeless  fight  of 
wood  against  iron,  and  keeping  the  flag  afloat  at 
the  main-mast  head  when  the  vessel  and  all  who 
remained  in  her  had  sunk ;  when  we  remember  the 
tale  of  the  Alamo,  in  whose  courtyard  and  hos- 
pital a  handful  of  American  frontiersmen  fought 
against  the  army  of  Mexico,  without  hope  of  vic- 
tory but  without  thought  of  retreat  or  surrender, 
till  they  earned  by  the  very  completeness  of  their 
annihilation  the  glory  of  that  monumental  in- 
scription :  "  Thermopylae  had  its  messenger  of  de- 
feat ;  the  Alamo  had  none  " ;  then  do  we  see  how 


4S  BACCALAUREATl':   ADDRESSES 

hollow  is  our  pretence  of  vnluiui;  things  hy  results 
when  we  are  brought  face  to  face  with  the  really 
heroic  struggles  of  life.  It  is  the  doing  that  makes 
the  deed  worthy  of  record,  not  the  material  out- 
come. 

This  is  my  first  point:  that  we  value  life  as  a 
field  of  action.  The  second  point  that  I  want  to 
make  is  that  we  value  those  lives  highest  which 
are  marked  by  the  habit  of  unselfish  action. 
Doing  makes  the  deed ;  unselfish  doing  makes  the 
man.  Even  for  those  who  are  cast  in  heroic 
mould,  and  start  with  the  habit  and  the  power  of 
accomplishing  great  things,  there  is  something 
about  selfishness  which  seems  to  deaden  the  power 
and  deface  the  model,  l^apoleon  had  a  character 
which  gave  the  promise  of  heroism ;  but  its  climax 
is  at  the  beginning,  not  at  the  end.  To  the  student 
of  the  heroic  in  history,  he  shines  brightest  in  his 
Italian  campaign.  From  Rivoli  to  the  Pyramids, 
from  the  Pyramids  to  Austerlitz,  from  Austerlitz 
to  Moscow,  and  from  Moscow  to  Waterloo,  we  find 
successive  stages  of  a  decadence  poorly  concealed 
even  when  widening  material  prosperity  was  most 
splendid.  But  with  a  man  like  Washington  or 
Lincoln,  who  worked  for  others  and  not  for  him- 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  DEVOTION  49 

self,  you  will  find  in  each  stage  of  his  career  a 
growth  of  mind  and  heart  which  made  his  follow- 
ers love  him  more  and  which  makes  history  yield 
him  a  larger  meed  of  admiration.  The  successes 
of  Napoleon  left  him  each  year  smaller.  The  fail- 
ures of  Washington  or  Lincoln  left  them  larger. 

In  the  verdict  of  history  the  question  whether 
a  man  possessed  this  unselfishness  counts  for  more 
than  any  peculiarities  of  his  intellect  or  character, 
or  than  any  arguments  as  to  the  rightfulness  of  the 
cause  he  advocated.  ISTever  were  there  two  men 
more  utterly  and  radically  different  in  character, 
in  intellect,  and  in  position,  than  the  great  Civil 
War  leaders,  Grant  and  Lee.  But  as  we  are  pass- 
ing somewhat  from  the  heat  of  passion  and  nar- 
rowness of  vision  engendered  by  war,  we  see  that 
the  dominant  trait  of  each  of  these  men  was  that 
he  counted  his  cause  for  everything  and  himself 
for  nothing.  It  was  this  trait  which  gave  them 
their  greatest  power  as  commanders  of  their  re- 
spective armies,  and  which  distinguished  them 
from  many  other  generals,  perhaps  equally  able, 
in  securing  them  a  common  tribute  of  personal  re- 
spect from  the  children  of  friend  and  foe.  Nor 
is  it  in  war  alone  that  the  power  of  unselfishness 


50  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

to  make  the  man  eomes  conspicuously  to  the  front. 
In  every  line  of  life-work,  Avhethcr  commercial  or 
political,  professional  or  charitable,  we  see  and 
feel  the  distinction  between  the  man  who  is  look- 
ing out  for  himself  and  the  man  who  forgets  him- 
self in  looking  out  for  others.  We  suspect  the  man 
of  the  former  type,  even  when  he  is  doing  things 
which  seem  desirable.  We  honor  the  man  of  the 
latter  type,  even  when  we  regard  his  methods  as 
mistaken  and  his  aims  as  chimerical. 

But  really  unselfish  action  in  peace  or  war  docs 
something  more  than  make  a  man  himself  great. 
It  helps  others  to  be  like  him.  Where  the  leader  is 
tainted  with  selfishness,  the  followers  will  be  self- 
ish too.  Where  the  leader  works  for  other  men, 
each  of  those  other  men,  according  to  the  measure 
of  his  power,  will  be  stimulated  to  go  outside  of 
himself  and  work  for  a  common  cause.  The  fact 
that  Washington  could  bear  his  burdens  so  pa- 
tiently in  dealing  with  Congress  and  with  commis- 
sioners was  a  powerful  influence  in  helping  the 
soldiers  of  his  army  to  bear  their  totally  different 
burdens  of  hunger  and  cold  in  the  winter  at  Valley 
Forge.  Unselfish  leadership  gives  an  inspiration 
which    people    sometimes    catch    with    surprising 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  DEVOTION  51 

quickness,  and  habitually  hold  with  yet  more  sur- 
prising tenacity.  There  is  in  the  human  heart  a 
capacity  for  hero  worship  which  is  the  chief  thing 
that  makes  political  progress  possible.  People 
will  not  hazard  their  comfort  for  a  new  theory. 
They  are  suspicious  of  philosophic  argument. 
But  once  let  them  see  a  man  who  is  living  for 
something  better  than  that  which  they  have  seen 
before,  and  they  will  follow  him  to  the  ends  of  the 
earth. 

The  really  great  leader,  we  may  say  with  all 
reverence,  is  the  revelation  of  God  to  his  followers. 
If  he,  with  his  wide  vision  and  large  powers,  sub- 
ordinates himself  to  an  unselfish  purpose — be  it 
the  alleviation  of  the  sufferings  of  his  fellow  men, 
or  the  emancipation  of  a  down-trodden  race  from 
its  conquerors,  or  the  development  of  a  new  social 
order — others  are  ready  to  accept  his  leadership 
and  to  regard  his  sayings  and  doings  as  revelations 
of  the  divine  purpose.  When  David  poured  out 
upon  the  rocks  the  water  which  had  been  brought 
through  so  much  peril,  it  was  the  token  that  he 
was  working  for  the  Lord,  and  not  for  himself. 
It  was  just  because  his  soldiers'  blood  was  destined 
by  him  for  the  Lord's  service  and  not  for  his  own 


r.J  HAl'CALAUREATl':   ADDRKSSES 

tli;it  tlicv  wciv  rciitly  to  slicd  that  1»1<mk1  in  the  t'ul- 
liliuont  (if  his  slii:;litost  wish.  It  was  his  devotion 
which  inacle  their  devotion,  and  whicli  enabled  him 
and  his  soldiers  together  to  establish  the  glorioii3 
kingdom  of  .Tudah,  And  when,  centuries  later, 
tlie  Christ  who  might  have  made  hiiiisclf  king  of 
the  Jews  and  surrounded  his  disciples  with  all  the 
pleasures  of  kingly  authority,  offered  himself  as 
a  sacrifice  for  his  work,  it  was  the  pouring  out  of 
his  blood  which  made  possible  among  those  disci- 
ples that  new  understanding  of  religion  which 
founded  a  kingdom  that  was  not  of  this  world,  but 
was  greater  far  than  anything  which  the  fishermen 
of  Galilee  or  the  ])opulace  of  Jerusalem  had  ever 
conceived. 

The  revelation  of  God  in  the  life  of  Jesus  Christ 
meant  more  to  the  world  in  teaching  the  possibili- 
ties of  religion  than  all  the  theology  that  was  ever 
written.  And  in  the  measure  that  our  life  is  like 
his,  we  have  the  same  power  to  reveal  God  to 
others.  Xone  of  us  lives  to  himself.  Every  act  of 
self-subordination,  however  small ;  every  sacrifice 
of  convenience  and  interest  to  the  comfort  of  those 
about  us;  every  renunciation  of  personal  ambition 
in   order   to   promote    ideals   which    shall    remain 


THE  SPIRIT  OF   DEVOTION  53 

when  we  have  passed  away — is,  in  ways  often  un- 
seen, a  lesson  and  a  help  to  others  to  go  and  do 
likewise.  Not  in  large  things  only,  but  in  small 
things,  is  it  true  that  the  blood  of  the  martyrs  is 
the  seed  of  the  church.  We  are  sometimes  tempted 
to  wonder,  in  the  midst  of  the  fatigues  and 
perplexities  of  trying  to  do  right,  what  all  this 
struggle  may  be  worth.  No  man  is  free  from  these 
moments  of  doubt  and  weariness.  Jesus  himself 
in  the  garden  of  Gethsemane  prayed  that  the  cup 
might  pass  from  him.  But  if  through  trial  and 
weakness  a  man  preserves  his  steadiness  of  pur- 
pose, content  to  leave  to  others  the  selfish  gains  and 
visible  results  of  achievement,  he  will  oftentimes 
find — perhaps  as  a  ray  of  light  at  the  moment, 
or  perhaps  not  till  years  afterward — that  some 
one  who  saw  his  perplexities  and  discouragements 
has  been  thereby  led  to  a  new  conception  of  duty 
and  a  new  ideal  of  life  which  he  never  could 
have  learned  by  seeing  him  in  prosperity.  It  is 
harder  to  keep  a  straight  course  in  the  nighttime 
than  in  the  daytime,  and  it  shows  less;  but  it 
means  more. 

Gentlemen  of  the  graduating  class :  You  are  am- 
bitious,  and  justly  ambitious,  to  be  leaders  of  men. 


51  l^ACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

There  are  two  wavs  in  wliicli  you  can  ])r()vc  your 
right  to  exercise  that  leadership:  by  good  judg- 
ment, or  by  heroism. 

The  opportunities  for  the  exercise  of  judgment 
are  obvious  to  every  man.  The  development  of 
civil  liberty  and  industrial  organization  has  made 
them  larger  than  they  ever  Avere  before.  It  is  a 
good  thing  that  it  should  be  so.  It  is  a  good  thing 
that  men  sliould  be  free  to  seek  happiness  in  their 
own  way ;  and  that  you,  if  you  can.  calculate  more 
accurately  where  their  political  and  industrial  ad- 
vantage lies,  should  be  allowed  to  guide  them. 
Just  as  long  as  your  calculations  are  right,  you 
may  be  certain  that  every  selfish  man  will  follow 
you  with  the  same  fidelity  with  which  the  gambler 
stakes  his  money  on  the  success  of  him  whom  he 
believes  to  be  the  shrewdest  card-player.  Success 
and  fidelity  of  this  kind  are  so  conspicuous  and  so 
widely  heralded  that  some  people  seem  to  think 
there  is  no  other  success  or  fidelity  worth  consid- 
ering. 

But  they  are  wrong.  The  world  is  more  than  a 
game  of  cards.  History  is  more  than  a  record  of 
gambling  operations.  Fidelity  is  more  than  self- 
ish belief  in  the  accuracy  of  another  man's  predic- 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  DEVOTION  55 

tions.  To  a  community  which  has  no  higher  ideals 
than  these,  destruction  is  approaching  rapidly.  If 
it  were  true,  as  some  metaphysicians  tell  us,  that 
all  action  is  necessarily  selfish — the  only  differ- 
ence being  that  some  people  admit  their  selfishness, 
others  try  to  conceal  it  from  the  rest  of  the  world, 
and  a  few  go  so  far  as  to  conceal  it  from  them- 
selves— the  whole  social  order  would  centuries  ago 
have  gone  to  pieces.  If  it  were  true,  as  a  large 
section  of  the  community  seems  to  believe,  that 
a  man's  success  is  measured  by  the  money  and 
the  offices  which  he  can  command,  or  that  the  test 
of  a  good  education  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that 
it  fits  a  man  to  make  money  and  to  get  offices,  the 
American  republic  would  be  fast  approaching  its 
end. 

In  the  face  of  conditions  like  these,  we  need 
to  insist  more  than  ever  before  on  the  possibility 
— nay,  on  the  absolute  duty — of  that  devotion  to 
ideals  which  underlies  social  order  and  social 
progress.  You  will  have  failed  to  learn  the  best 
lesson  of  your  college  life  unless  you  have  caught 
that  spirit  which  teaches  you  to  value  money  and 
offices  and  other  symbols  of  success  for  the  sake 
of  the  possibilities  of  service  which  they  represent, 


r>r>  I^ACCALAUHl'LVrK   ADDiniSSlOS 

and  to  despise  the  innn  who  thinks  of  the  money 
or  offices  ratlior  than  ol"  the  nse  he  can  make  of 
them.  It  is  tliis  way  of  estimating  success  which 
makes  a  man  a  gentleman  in  liis  dealings  with 
others,  which  makes  him  a  jiatriot  wlien  his  coun- 
try calls  for  his  services,  which  makes  him  a 
Christian  in  his  conception  of  life  and  his  ideals 
of  daily  living.  These  are  the  things  which  count 
in  the  long  run.  If  you  value  the  world  simply 
for  what  you  can  get  out  of  it,  he  assured  that 
the  world  will  in  turn  estimate  your  value  to  it 
by  what  it  can  get  out  of  you.  A  man  who  sets 
his  ambition  in  such  a  narrow  frame  may  have 
followers  in  prosperity,  but  not  in  adversity.  He 
can  secure  plenty  of  sycophants,  but  no  friends. 
That  man,  on  the  other  hand,  who  values  the 
world  for  what  he  can  put  into  it;  who  deals 
courteously  wuth  his  associates,  patriotically  with 
his  country,  and  who,  under  whatsoever  creed 
or  form,  has  that  spirit  of  devotion  to  an  ideal 
which  is  the  essential  thing  in  religion — that  man 
makes  himself  part  of  a  world  which  is  bound  to- 
gether by  higher  motives  than  the  liope  of  material 
success.  If  you  pursue  truth,  people  will  be  true 
to  you,  and  you  will  help  to  make  tlunii  truer  to 


THE  SPIRIT  OF   DEVOTION  57 

all  their  ideals.  If  yon  love  others,  others  will 
love  you,  and  you  will  help  to  teach  them  a  wider 
charity  in  all  their  dealings  with  the  world.  If 
you  take  the  honors  and  emoluments  of  your 
leadership,  not  as  a  privilege  of  your  own,  but  as 
a  trust  to  be  consecrated  to  the  Lord,  even  as 
David  poured  out  upon  the  rocks  the  water  that 
represented  the  lifeblood  of  his  followers,  then 
may  you  be  sure  that  each  man  who  was  devoted 
before  will  be  doubly  devoted  thereafter,  and  will 
find,  brought  home  to  his  heart,  the  true  meaning 
of  success  in  life,  as  no  material  prosperity  or 
intellectual  argument  could  bring  it.  "  The  Jews 
require  a  sign,  and  the  Greeks  seek  after  wisdom: 
but  we  preach  Christ  crucified,  unto  the  Jews  a 
stumbling-block,  and  unto  the  Greeks  foolishness; 
but  unto  them  that  are  called,  both  Jews  and 
Greeks,  Christ  the  power  of  God  and  the  wisdom 
of  God."  Such  it  has  proved  itself  for  nearly 
two  thousand  years.  May  it  be  our  privilege  still 
to  preach  this  gospel  of  self-sacrificing  action,  and 
still  to  share  in  revealing  the  meaning  of  this 
gospel  to  the  generations  which  are  to  come. 


THE    i.AKClE    VIKW    OF    LIFE 

"Except  the  Lord  keep  the  house,  they  hihor  in  vain  that 
build  it;  except  the  Lord  keep  the  city,  the  watchman  wakelh 
but  in  vain." 

Seven  years  ago,  when  England  was  celebrating 
the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  accession  of  her 
queen,  and  when  every  part  of  the  British  Em- 
pire united  in  offerings  of  patriotic  pride,  the 
chorus  of  congratulation  was  broken  by  a  sharp 
note  of  warning  from  that  empire's  greatest  poet : 

"  If,  drunk  with  sight  of  power,  we  loose 
Wild  tongues  that  have  not  Thee  in  awe. 

Such  boastings  as  the  Gentiles  use, 
Or  lesser  breeds  without  the  Law — 

Lord  God  of  Hosts,  be  with  us  yet, 

Lest  we  forget — lest  we  forget." 

It  was  not  the  first  time  that  a  poet  had  said 

such  things  to  the  English  people.     Milton  and 

Gray  and  Wordsworth  had  in  their  several  ages 

sounded  the  same  note  of  warning.     But  Milton 

and  Gray  and  Wordsworth  had  all  lived  in  some 

measure  apart  from  active  affairs.     The  thing  that 

58 


THE  LARGE  VIEW  OF  LIFE  59 

most  surprised  men  in  Kipling's  "  Recessional " 
was  that  it  came  from  one  who  had  spent  his  life 
among  soldiers,  sharing  their  ideals  and  ambitions 
and  sentiments.  It  was  the  cry  of  a  man  of  action, 
who  knew  whereof  he  spoke — a  cry  like  that  of 
David  to  the  Hebrews,  or  of  ^schylus  to  the 
Athenians — a  cry  of  a  man  who  had  seen  a  nation 
in  its  making,  and  who  had  proved  from  contact 
with  the  "  far-flung  battle-line "  that  the  Lord 
saveth  not  with  sword  and  spear. 

Not  in  Britain  alone  and  not  in  military  affairs 
alone  is  this  lesson  needed.  The  battle-lines  of 
the  nineteenth  century  have  engaged  in  the  con- 
quests of  peace  as  well  as  of  war.  The  boasts  of 
the  leaders  of  scientific  and  industrial  progress 
are  no  less  loud  than  those  of  the  captains  and 
kings.  In  our  assemblies  and  our  markets,  no  less 
than  in  our  armies  and  our  navies,  the  tumult 
and  the  shouting  tend  to  crowd  out  the  remem- 
brance of  things  that  are  more  fundamental  and 
more  essential.  I  wish  I  had  the  poet's  power 
to  find  words  which  would  apply  to  the  every- 
day life  that  is  before  us  the  lesson  of  Kipling's 
"  Recessional."  But  I  can  do  no  more  than  put 
into  plain  prose  some  facts  of  history,  past  and 


()0  BACCALAUREATE    ADDRESSES 

Iiresciit,  wliicli  nuiv  serve  to  guide  us  in  sluijiiu^ 
tuir  life's  course  amid  this  tumuli,  and  warn  us 
jigaiust  tlic  dangers  involved  in  the  untliiukiug 
jiceeptiince  of  current  standards  of  success,  at  the 
cost,  it  may  be,  of  the  very  best  that  we  have 
inherited  from  our  fathers. 

You  have  been  reminded  numy  times  over  of 
the  exceptional  privileges  and  opportunities  which 
the  present  age  offers.  In  every  Forefathers'  Day 
address  you  have  been  told  how  your  ancestors 
toiled  and  fought  that  you  might  enter  into  the 
fruit  of  tlieir  labors.  At  every  industrial  exhi- 
bition you  have  been  congratulated  on  the  com- 
mand which  your  generation  enjoys  over  the 
physical  forces  of  Nature;  at  every  public  cele- 
bration you  have  been  congratulated  on  the  op- 
portunities that  lie  before  the  man  of  ambition 
to  extend  his  power  over  wider  fields  than  lay 
open  to  his  fathers.  But  there  is  something  else 
which  has  been  done  for  you  which  is  more  im- 
portant than  all  these  things  put  together.  Your 
fathers  have  built  up  a  morality  and  a  conscience 
and  a  faith  to  which  you  have  fallen  heirs. 
Slowly  and  laboriously,  for  generation  after  gen- 
eration,   they    have    been    substituting    law    for 


THE  LARGE  VIEW  OF  LIFE  61 

license,  self-restraint  for  passion,  reverence  for 
superstition,  love  for  hate.  Slowly  they  have 
built  up  a  religious  spirit  which  makes  men  de- 
vote their  lives  to  things  outside  of  themselves 
and  larger  than  themselves ;  a  spirit  which  gives 
to  laws  and  morals  and  creeds  all  their  real 
vitality.  In  this  slow  process  of  evolution  the 
self-willed  and  perverse  have  heen  gradually  elim- 
inated, while  the  unselfish  and  the  righteous 
and  the  spiritual  have  found  a  larger  and  stronger 
following  as  centuries  went  by.  The  work  of  a 
devoted  leader  has  stimulated  his  followers  to 
devotion.  The  inspiration  of  a  prophetic  teacher 
has  called  forth  a  response  to  his  prophecies  in 
the  hearts  of  mankind.  Movements  which  seemed 
small  and  weak,  but  which  had  in  them  the  possi- 
bility of  enlisting  religious  enthusiasm,  have  pre- 
vailed against  overwhelming  obstacles;  and  the 
very  violence  that  sought  to  destroy  them  has  but 
raised  up  new  disciples  for  the  cause. 

This  faith,  this  inspiration,  this  enthusiastic 
devotion,  are  the  things  which  make  a  nation 
really  great,  or  a  man's  life  really  worth  living. 
If  wealth  and  dominion  follow  as  a  result  of 
such  faith  and  enthusiasm,  they  are  good.     But 


62  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

if  wonltli  and  (loiiiinion  are  inadc  a  ])riniary  ob- 
ject, and  are  trusted  as  a  source  of  national 
strength  instead  of  its  consequence  or  evidence, 
tliey  prove  a  false  reliance.  And  it  is  an  un- 
fortunate fact  that  very  few  nations  have  achieved 
wealth  or  dominion  without  suffering  loss  of  faith 
and  enthusiasm,  and  remaining  with  the  empty 
husk  of  greatness,  at  the  very  moment  when  they 
deemed  themselves  most  powerful.  For  along 
with  the  acquisition  of  power  there  is  apt  to  come 
a  relaxing  of  discipline.  Along  with  the  achieve- 
ment of  the  means  of  industrial  ease  there  comes 
a  philosophy  of  life  which  makes  industrial  ease 
the  goal  and  end  of  human  effort.  In  almost 
every  age  of  scientific  progress  and  material  pros- 
perity, the  old  dogmas  by  which  discipline  was 
supported  are  undermined  and  the  old  terrors  of 
the  law  mitigated  by  the  progress  of  scientific 
criticism;  until  many  a  j)eople,  having  lost  cer- 
tain outworks  of  an  ancient  faith  which  were 
once  deemed  essential,  abandons  the  whole  ground 
on  which  that  ancient  faith  rested,  takes  up  a 
new  philosophy  of  life  which  seems  stronger 
than  the  other  merely  because  its  weak  points 
have  not  been  so  fully  examined  and  tested,  and 


THE  LARGE  VIEW  OF  LIFE  63 

ere  the  change  is  fully  realized,  finds  its  real 
power  destroyed  and  its  real  glory  a  thing  of  the 
past. 

There  are  two  philosophies  of  life  which  are 
offered  to  us  in  place  of  the  religion  of  our  fathers 
— one  which  lays  stress  on  the  natural  impulses 
as  superior  in  authority  to  the  dictates  of  a 
conventional  morality ;  the  other  which  looks  to  en- 
lightened selfishness  as  the  means  by  which  man- 
kind is  to  be  delivered  from  unenlightened  re- 
straints of  tradition.  I  believe  that  each  of  these 
philosophies  is  erroneous:  that  the  one  means  a 
reversion  toward  savagery,  the  other  a  degenera- 
tion toward  social  weakness.  But  so  plausible 
are  the  arguments  with  which  they  are  supported 
and  so  insidious  the  tendencies  that  make  for  their 
adoption,  that  it  will  be  no  waste  of  time  to  take 
account  of  these  arguments  and  tendencies  and 
see  what  they  really  signify. 

There  is  a  school  of  writers  like  Zola  or  D'An- 
nunzio  which  lays  great  stress  on  what  it  calls 
the  primal  instincts  of  mankind.  These  writers 
think  that  with  all  that  has  been  done  in  the  way 
of  civilization,  its  effect  is  like  that  of  an  arti- 
ficial veneer;  that  man  remains  at  bottom  an  ani- 


04  BACa\LAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

null,  nioveil  liv  ;iuiiii;il  impulses  and  passions;  that 
to  feel  these  passions  strongly  is  a  sign  of  strength, 
ami  that  to  have  them  under  complete  control  is 
an  indication  of  weakness.  At  one  point  or  an- 
other in  our  lives  we  are  all  likely  to  have  some 
touch  of  this  spirit  of  impatience  with  civiliza- 
tion. AVe  shall  none  of  us — except  possibly  under 
the  influence  of  violent  physical  disease  —  feel 
these  impulses  in  their  really  savage  form,  which 
would  lead  us  into  orgies  of  wrath  and  murder. 
But  we  shall  find  often  enough,  wdien  social  laws 
and  usages  stand  in  the  way  of  our  convenience 
or  comfort,  an  impulse  to  override  those  laws  and 
usages  for  our  individnal  pleasure;  and  we  shall 
be  tempted  to  avail  ourselves  of  every  excuse 
which  modern  literature  or  modern  philosophy 
may  give  to  regard  revenge  or  self-will  or  intem- 
perance in  its  various  forms  as  a  token  of  strength 
on  our  own  part  and  a  thing  superior  in  authority 
to  the  morality  taught  us  by  our  fathers. 

These  animal  passions  have  their  place  in  life. 
They  may  often  serve  as  impulses  to  civilization; 
they  may  sometimes  be  so  wholly  repressed  that 
this  will  constitute  an  evidence  of  weakness  in- 
stead of  strength.     In  that  profound  classification 


THE   LARGE  VIEW  OF   LIFE  65 

of  human  sins  originally  made  by  Aristotle,  and 
adopted  by  Dante  as  the  basis  of  arrangement  of 
his  "  Inferno,"  there  is  a  sharp  distinction  drawn 
between  those  animal  vices  like  lust  or  anger, 
which  are  but  the  unbridled  excess  of  qualities 
useful  and  virtuous  in  their  place,  and  those 
deeper  forms  of  evil  like  cruelty  or  breach  of 
trust  which  are  wrong  in  themselves,  whether  ex- 
ercised without  restraint  or  under  the  influence 
of  cool  calculation.  And  Aristotle  further  recog- 
nizes that  a  man  may  have  these  animal  impulses 
in  inadequate  amount,  and  may  thereby  fail  of  the 
proper  measure  of  virtue — that  it  is  as  bad  to  be 
stolid  as  it  is  to  be  angry;  as  bad  to  be  shiftless 
as  it  is  to  be  covetous;  or,  to  quote  his  pregnant 
phrase,  that  virtue  is  a  mean  between  two  ex- 
tremes. But  this  fact  does  not  one  Avhit  abate 
the  necessity  that  these  things  should  be  con- 
trolled by  some  strong  force  residing  within  the 
man,  which  shall  make  him  the  master  of  these 
impulses  and  not  their  slave.  Otherwise  the  lust- 
ful man,  as  in  Dante's  hell,  will  be  driven  about 
forever  in  utter  darkness  by  fierce  winds ;  the  in- 
temperate will  wallow  forever  in  the  foul  storms; 
the  covetous  and  the  spendthrift  alike  will  to  all 


6G  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

ctoniitv  roll  tlioir  biirdons  baokwaril  and  forward 
in  ])iirposeless  contradiction ;  the  niiiirv  will  for- 
ever tear  one  another  to  pieces  in  the  bog  that 
surrounds  the  inner  city  of  fire.  It  is  of  no  pur- 
pose to  dignify  these  passions  by  the  name  of 
primal  instinct.  Literature  is  one  long  story  of  the 
vanity  of  these  primal  instincts  against  the  moral 
nature  of  man.  "  From  '  CEdipus  Tyrannus ' 
to  '  The  Scarlet  Letter '  the  primary  passions  are 
defeated  and  overcome  by  duty,  religion,  and  the 
moral  law.  The  misery  of  broken  law  outlives 
passion  and  tramples  on  its  embers.  The  love  of 
Paolo  and  Francesca  is  swallowed  up  in  tlieir  sin. 
It  is  the  like  in  '  Faust.'  Earthly  passions  cannot 
avail  against  the  moral  powers." 

But  I  have  delayed  too  long  on  a  group  of  temp- 
tations to  disregard  moral  law  and  religious  senti- 
ment, which  to  the  majority  of  men  of  this  age 
has  only  occasional  or  secondary  importance.  Our 
chief  danger  comes  from  the  other  quarter — from 
trusting  to  the  work  of  reason  in  places  where  we 
are  imperfectly  prepared  for  its  operation.  Most 
of  us  are  so  constituted  and  trained  that  the  re- 
laxation of  discipline  will  not  leave  us  at  the 
mercy  of  blind  passion;  but  it  may  leave  us  at 


THE  LARGE  VIEW  OF  LIFE  67 

the  mercy  of  an  almost  equally  blind  spirit  of 
selfish  calculation. 

The  whole  course  of  events  in  the  nineteenth 
century  has  been  such  as  to  lay  men  open  to  this 
temptation.  The  growth  of  liberty  during  that 
century  has  given  people  more  opportunities  to 
do  as  they  pleased.  They  have  been  not  only 
allowed  but  encouraged  to  pursue  their  own  wel- 
fare ;  and  the  general  results  of  this  course  of  con- 
duct have  been  good  for  the  community.  Under 
these  circumstances,  there  has  been  a  tendency  to 
assume  that  if  each  man  pursued  his  own  inter- 
ests in  a  more  or  less  intelligent  fashion  things 
would  somehow  work  themselves  out  for  the  bene- 
fit of  the  body  politic ;  and  that  even  if  they  failed 
to  work  themselves  out  in  this  way,  the  individual 
himself  was  free  of  responsibility. 

This  attempt  to  make  human  selfishness  the 
fundamental  standard  of  right  conduct  is  as  dis- 
astrous as  the  attempt  to  make  our  unchecked 
animal  instincts  the  standards  of  right  conduct. 
Almost  every  evil — political,  social,  or  commer- 
cial— which  constitutes  a  serious  menace  to  the 
permanent  prosperity  of  our  country  can  be  traced 
directly  to  our  tolerant  acceptance  of  selfishness 


6S  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

as  a  basis  of  morality.  Uudcr  the  resli-aints  ])ro- 
vidod  by  our  laws  and  traditions  and  inherited 
tastes,  the  evil  effects  of  selfishness  may  remain 
for  a  time  nnnoticed,  just  as  the  evil  effects  of 
appetite  or  passion  may  remain  unnoticed.  But 
if  we  allow  self-interest  to  be  made  the  guiding 
star  of  our  lives,  sooner  or  later  there  comes  a 
crisis  when  we  face  the  choice  between  good  and 
bad,  and  take  the  bad.  Sooner  or  later  there 
comes  some  temptation  of  pleasure  to  which  we 
sacrifice  our  honor;  some  mess  of  pottage  attrac- 
tively disguised,  for  which  we  sell  our  birthright. 
Do  not  be  blind  to  this  truth ;  that  if  you  have  no 
better  motive  than  your  own  personal  interest, 
it  means  that  your  soul  is  for  sale  if  the  price 
be  made  sufiiciently  high.  You  may  disguise  this 
fact  from  yourselves,  but  you  wall  not  disguise 
it  from  others.  The  world  is  full  of  men  and 
women  who,  having  thus  given  themselves  over 
to  the  operation  of  selfishness,  are  anxious  to  be- 
lieve that  there  is  no  motive  higher  than  that  by 
whicli  they  themselves  are  bound;  that  honor  is 
a  dream,  religion  a  sham,  Christianity  a  set  of 
empty  forms ;  that  if  you  can  get  at  the  real  heart 
of  a  man  or  woman  there  is  nothing  at  the  bottom 


I 


THE  LARGE  VIEW  OF  LIFE  69 

except  self-interest — usually  concealed  and  some- 
times refined,  but  in  one  form  or  another  the  con- 
trolling motive. 

It  is  for  you  to  prove  the  falsity  of  this  view 
— to  show  in  your  own  lives  that  the  honor  of  a 
gentleman  is  not  for  sale,  the  faith  of  a  Christian 
something  more  than  an  empty  form  of  speech; 
that  you  care  for  your  parents  and  your  friends 
and  your  country,  not  because  you  expect  to  get 
something  out  of  them  in  the  way  of  reward,  but 
because  you  are  ready  to  give  to  them  whatever 
they  need  at  your  hands.  If  you  can  accept  this 
for  yourselves  and  believe  it  of  others,  and  say  so 
plainly,  you  will  do  good  to  your  country  and 
your  fellow  men  beyond  all  power  to  calculate. 
You  will  enroll  yourselves  in  that  great  church 
which  includes  all  men  of  honor,  whatever  their 
creed,  who  have  refused  once  and  forever  to  be 
the  slaves  either  of  passion  or  of  self-interest. 

Do  not  be  disturbed  if  your  scientific  investiga- 
tion has  rendered  it  impossible  for  you  to  sub- 
scribe to  some  of  the  old  creeds.  Jesus  of  Naza- 
reth himself  rejected  many  of  the  formulas  which 
the  churches  of  his  day  deemed  essential  to  sal- 
vation.   Wc  uiay  distrust  many  traditional  articles 


70  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

of  faitli  as  iinj^rovable,  \\c  may  if  necessary  reject 
some  of  tliciu  as  survivals  of  ancient  prejudice, 
and  yet  take  our  stand  witli  Edmund  Burke  when 
be  makes  his  bold  avowal:  "  We  are  unwilling  to 
east  away  the  coat  of  ancient  prejudice  and  trust 
ourselves  to  the  naked  reason,  because  we  suspect 
that  in  each  man  the  stock  of  reason  is  small,  and 
prefer  to  avail  ourselves  of  the  bank  and  capital 
of  ages."  Even  if  avc  can  go  no  farther  than  this, 
we  have  creed  enough  to  justify  ourselves  for  not 
selling  our  souls.  But  I  believe  that  most  of  us 
can  go  a  step  farther,  and  can  accept  enough  of 
the  principles  of  Christianity  to  take  our  place 
in  the  effective  Christian  work  of  the  future. 
Christianity,  as  taught  by  its  founder,  did  not 
deny  the  important  place  of  human  instincts  and 
passions,  nor  did  it  seek  to  prohibit  the  exercise 
of  human  reason.  It  sought  only  to  turn  these 
impulses  and  passions  to  the  help  of  others,  and 
to  have  this  reason  exercised  for  unselfish  ends. 
The  belief  which  most  it  inculcated  was  the  belief 
in  the  nearness  of  God's  power  to  human  affairs. 
The  one  ideal  on  which  it  insisted  was  the  ideal 
of  devoted  self-sacrifice  where  the  call  of  duty 
conflicted  with  the  dictates  of  apparent  advantage. 


I 


THE  LARGE  VIEW  OF   LIFE  71 

Whoever  so  loves  his  neighbor  that  he  would  save 
him  unnecessary  pain,  even  at  his  own  cost,  and 
so  loves  his  duty  that  he  will  not  barter  his  con- 
science for  any  external  advantages  to  himself, 
is  not  far  from  the  kingdom  of  God — nay,  he  is 
indeed  a  member  of  that  kingdom,  in  this  life  and 
in  whatever  may  come  thereafter. 

"The  tumult  and  the  shouting  dies; 

The  captains  and  the  kings  depart: 
Still  stands  Thine  ancient  sacrifice, 

An  humble  and  a  contrite  heart. 
Lord  God  of  Hosts,  be  with  us  yet. 
Lest  we  forget — lest  we  forget!" 

Gentlemen  of  the  graduating  class :  The  really 
fundamental  thing  in  a  man's  life  is  his  choice 
of  a  religion.  Two  religions  are  to-day  strug- 
gling for  the  mastery.  There  is  the  religion  of 
Mammon,  whose  dominant  purpose  is  selfishness 
and  whose  creed  is  indifference  to  moral  considera- 
tions, except  so  far  as  they  may  be  regarded  as 
instruments  of  individual  advancement.  There 
is  the  religion  of  God,  whose  purpose  is  service 
and  whose  creed  is  loyalty  to  something  larger 
than  yourselves.  The  religion  of  Mammon  ap- 
peals to  those  who  value  the  external  evidences 
of  success — the   pomp  and  the  luxury,   the   title 


7-  IkVccai.aurkatI':  addhiosses 

and  I  lie  j^liow.  The  religion  of  CJod  appeals  to 
lliose  who  value  life  for  the  work  that  it  brings, 
and  measure  success  by  the  honest  elTort  that  ji 
man  has  made  to  do  his  work.  It  apjKials  to 
those  for  whom  wealth  and  jiower  and  professional 
eminence  are  not  ultimate  ends,  hnt  means  to 
larger  service  and  sacrifice.  It  ai)})eals  to  men 
who  will  not  sell  their  honor,  no  matter  liow 
high  the  price,  nor  betray  their  friends,  no  matter 
how  great  the  advantage.  It  appeals  to  men  who 
have  vision  large  enough  and  purpose  deep  enough 
to  hold  a  straight  course  in  the  face  of  opposition 
or  misrepresentation,  and  endure  for  conscience' 
sake  whatever  hardship  may  fall  to  their  lot. 
These  were  the  ideals  of  Christ,  wliich  he  held 
through  temptation  and  suffering.  This  is  the 
significance  of  every  line  in  the  history  of  his  life 
and  death.  Wlioever  follows  liim  in  this  spirit 
has  the  right  to  call  himself  a  Christian  and  to 
claim  the  promises  of  the  Christian  faith — the 
promise  that  whosoever  will  lose  his  life  for 
Christ's  sake  and  the  gospel's,  the  same  shall  find 
it.  By  many  roads  do  such  men  come  to  the  feet 
of  God :  but  thither  do  we  all  come  at  last. 


KELIGIOUS    KULES    AND    RELIGIOUS 
IDEALS 

"  Except  your  righteousness  shall  exceed  the  righteous- 
ness of  the  scribes  and  Pharisees,  ye  shall  in  no  case  enter 
into  the  kingdom  of  heaven." 

What  was  the  essential  characteristic  of  the 
righteousness  of  the  scribes  and  Pharisees  ? 

It  was  this:  The  scribes  and  Pharisees  made 
morality,  and  even  religion,  a  matter  of  rules  and 
conventions.  They  looked  for  nothing  higher  and 
cared  for  nothing  better  than  a  system  of  observ- 
ances which  they  had  inherited  from  their  fathers. 
This  system  was  not  in  itself  a  bad  one.  The 
Pharisees  had  a  more  enlightened  code  of  conduct 
than  any  of  their  contemporaries  or  than  most 
of  the  peoples  who  have  come  after  them.  This 
code  inculcated  in  a  high  degree  the  virtues  of 
religious  observance  and  of  obedience  to  law.  It 
laid  some  emphasis  on  the  more  fundamental  vir- 
tues of  justice  and  reasonableness.  It  was  based 
on  a  philosophy  in  which  God  and  a  future  life 
were  essential  articles  of  faith.     Doubtless  there 

73 


f 


74  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

wvrc  among  tlio  rjiiiks  of  tlie  riiarisees  many 
hyjx)erites,  who  used  the  forms  of  religion  and 
of  morality  as  a  cloak  for  tlieir  vices  and  sins; 
but  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  the  propor- 
tion of  such  men  was  greater  than  has  always  ex- 
isted in  any  society  where  righteousness  has  been 
sufficiently  valued  to  make  it  worth  while  to  put 
counterfeits  into  circulation. 

Why,  then,  does  devotion  to  a  good  system  of 
rules  and  observances  like  that  of  the  Pharisees 
lead  its  followers  astray? 

Partly  because  the  practice  of  relying  upon 
rules  and  conventions,  however  good,  lessens  a 
man's  power  of  meeting  the  unforeseen  emergen- 
cies and  crises  of  life.  !Next  to  the  boy  who  comes 
to  college  with  bad  habits,  the  one  who  is  in  most 
danger  is  he  who  has  had  such  superlatively  good 
habits  that  an  infraction  of  a  single  one  of  them 
breaks  down  the  barrier  uj^on  which  he  has  re- 
lied, and  leaves  him  without  a  system  of  inner 
defences.  There  are  two  kinds  of  degeneracy: 
one  which  comes  from  too  little  reliance  upon  law, 
another  which  comes  from  too  much.  The  man 
whom  we  commonly  call  a  degenerate  suffers  from 
the  former  cause.     He  has  broken  so  many  laws 


I 


RELIGIOUS  IDEALS  75 

that  law  as  a  whole  ceases  to  have  authority  over 
him,  and  he  becomes  powerless  to  resist  temptation 
from  any  quarter.  But  there  are  and  always  have 
been  degenerates  of  the  opposite  type — men  who 
have  kept  the  laws  that  they  were  taught  to  obey 
until  such  laws  become  the  only  authority  which 
controls  them  and  the  only  standard  which  they 
recognize,  and  they  are  powerless  to  feel  the 
stimulus  of  anything  better.  There  is  a  point 
beyond  which  drill  ceases  to  be  a  help,  and  be- 
comes a  hindrance ;  there  is  a  set  of  circumstances 
where  the  person  who  has  been  subjected  to  too 
much  control  is  as  helpless  as  the  one  who  has  been 
subjected  to  too  little. 

Every  college  man,  as  he  goes  out  into  the  world, 
is  exposed  to  a  change  of  atmosphere  not  unlike 
that  through  which  he  passed  in  coming  from 
school  to  college.  If  during  his  college  life  he 
has  come  to  identify  goodness  with  the  keeping 
of  a  complex  set  of  rules  and  observances,  he  is 
in  great  danger.  It  is  almost  inevitable  that  under 
the  new  conditions  which  he  meets  he  will  disobey 
some  of  these  rules  or  disregard  some  of  these 
observances.  If  he  has  placed  his  trust  in  keeping 
the  letter  of  the  law,  the  breaking  of  one  rule  is 


76  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

apt  to  be  followed  by  the  breaking  of  a  great  many 
others.  This  experience  is  a  typical  one.  Every 
man  and  every  race  which  relies  for  protection  on 
the  text  of  the  law  rather  than  on  its  spirit  is 
menaced  by  this  risk  of  complete  failure  in  emer- 
gencies. 

But  even  if  no  emergencies  or  crises  arise  which 
stretch  our  rules  to  the  breaking  point,  there  is 
another  and  more  insidious  series  of  dangers 
which  beset  the  man  whose  morality  and  religion 
are  matters  of  rules  alone.  The  keeping  of 
definite  rules  produces  self-satisfaction;  and  self- 
satisfaction  is  but  one  step  short  of  moral  stag- 
nation. Few  of  us  realize  how  hard  it  is  to  es- 
cape this  peril,  or  how  much  harm  it  does  to  its 
victims. 

It  is  inevitable  that  a  body  of  men  brought  up 
together  and  working  in  harmony  with  one  an- 
other should  value  their  rituals  and  creeds  and 
codes  of  law.  To  a  certain  extent  it  is  right  and 
wise,  as  well  as  inevitable.  For  all  these  things 
represent  the  summarized  experience  of  the  past. 
A  ritual  is  a  set  of  observances  which  past  genera- 
tions have  gradually  accumulated  because  they 
found  them  valuable  in  promoting  a  reverent  and 


RELIGIOUS  IDEALS  77 

religious  frame  of  mind.  A  creed  is  a  set  of 
jjropositions  which  past  generations  have  collected 
because  they  found  them  useful  in  helping  people 
toward  a  working  philosophy  of  life.  A  code  is 
a  set  of  laws  which  past  generations  have  estab- 
lished because  they  found  them  effective  in  secur- 
ing that  orderly  conduct  which  is  the  basis  of  good 
morals.  Any  man  who  recklessly  throws  aside 
these  means  of  promoting  religion  and  morality 
is  lacking  alike  in  reverence  and  in  practical 
wisdom.  But  it  is  easy  to  exalt  these  things 
into  a  place  for  which  they  were  never  intend-, 
ed ;  to  make  them  ends  instead  of  means,  goals 
of  human  progress  instead  of  steps  in  human 
progress. 

In  one  of  the  early  battles  of  the  Crimean  War 
a  brigade  of  the  English  army,  which  had  made 
an  ill-judged  attack  on  the  centre  of  the  Russian 
position,  seemed  likely  to  be  annihilated  or  cap- 
tured ;  for  it  unexpectedly  found  itself  face  to  face 
with  a  force  of  well-posted  artillery  for  which  it 
was  no  match.  To  the  surprise  of  the  English 
commander,  however,  the  Russian  guns  at  the 
critical  moment  retired  from  their  position,  which 
was  occupied  by  the  English  without  resistance. 


78  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

The  reason  for  this  false  inoveinent,  through 
which  the  Russians  lost  a  battle  that  they  might 
otherwise  have  won,  lay  in  the  general  orders  of 
the  Russian  emperor  to  his  subordinates.  He  had 
been  a  great  admirer  of  the  strategy  of  the  Duke 
of  Wellington,  and  was  particularly  impressed 
with  the  fact  that  this  great  commander  never  lost 
a  gun;  consequently  he  had  said  to  the  officers  of 
his  army :  "  Whatever  you  do,  do  not  lose  a  gun." 
They  saved  their  guns;  they  lost  their  battle. 
This  is  what  happens  in  the  practical  work  of  the 
world,  when  some  one  principle  of  conduct  or  trait 
of  character  is  worshipped  and  followed  for  its 
own  sake,  instead  of  for  the  sake  of  what  it  will 
accomplish. 

The  same  sort  of  thing  is  constantly  happening 
in  our  spiritual  life.  A  man  may  take  such  satis- 
faction in  the  observance  of  a  religious  form  that 
he  ceases  to  value  the  religious  spirit.  He  may 
repeat  the  words  of  a  creed  until  he  cares  more 
for  the  words  than  for  the  meaning.  He  may 
obey  a  code  of  laws  so  implicitly  that  he  refuses 
to  recognize  the  need  of  any  moral  authority  out- 
side of  that  code. 

Poor  Christian,  in  Bunyan's  Pilgrim's  Progress, 


A 


RELIGIOUS  IDEALS  79 

is  forever  stumbling  into  this  kind  of  pitfall. 
The  very  intensity  of  his  desire  to  be  good  makes 
him  overvalue  any  step,  real  or  apparent,  in 
the  direction  of  goodness,  and  think  that  he  has 
practically  reached  the  end  when  he  has  only 
grasped  a  more  or  less  imperfect  means.  He  has 
a  burden  of  sin,  of  vs^hich  he  would  be  rid.  He 
hears  that  Mr.  Legality  has  skill  in  relieving 
people  of  such  burdens,  and  he  follows  Mr. 
Legality  until  a  mountain  threatens  to  fall  upon 
his  head.  At  a  later  stage  of  his  journey  he  goes 
to  sleep  in  his  satisfaction  at  being  half  way  up 
the  Hill  DiflSculty,  and  loses  the  roll  which  was 
to  give  him  admission  to  the  Celestial  City. 
Again,  he  is  so  puffed  up  with  the  knowledge 
which  he  has  received  at  the  Palace  Beautiful  that 
the  next  stages  of  his  journey  are  fraught  with 
perils  which  he  himself  has  created ;  and  he  finds 
the  weapons  which  were  given  him  in  that  palace 
a  most  uncertain  defence  against  the  assaults  of 
Apollyon.  ISTot  until  the  end  of  his  career,  when 
he  is  fit  to  pass  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  has 
his  experience  taught  him  to  keep  awake  on  the 
Enchanted  Ground  of  convention  and  business 
usage,   and  to  preserve  himself  from  that  sleep 


so  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

into  which  many  pilgrims,  safely  past  the  physical 
trials  ami  dangers  of  the  way,  fall,  never  more  to 
awake. 

Xever  more  to  awake ;  for  the  sleep  of  conven- 
tionality is  of  all  slumbers  the  most  fatal.  Life 
is  progress — perpetual  adaptation  to  new  condi- 
tions. The  self-satisfaction  which  leads  a  man 
to  be  content  with  the  old  is  the  beginning  of 
death.  The  apparent  excellence  of  a  result  ac- 
tually attained,  the  mistakes  and  errors  involved 
in  imperfect  efforts  to  advance  to  better  results, 
must  not  be  allowed  to  obscure  our  view  of  this 
truth.  Xo  man,  however  far  and  however  well 
he  has  managed  the  voyage  of  life,  can  afford  to 
rest  complacent  in  what  he  has  achieved.  The 
best  of  us,  said  an  old  sea-captain,  has  made  mis- 
takes enough  to  throw  him  half  a  point  off  his 
course ;  and  if  a  man  is  half  a  point  off  his  course 
the  light  which  he  fondly  believes  to  be  the  harbor 
entrance  marks  the  reef  on  which  he  is  going  to 
destruction. 

The  Doctor  Faustus  of  mediaeval  legend  was 
a  man  who  bargained  his  soul  away  to  the  devil 
for  a  brief  season  of  indulgence  in  riotous  living 
and  the  practice  of  black  arts  of  magic.     Not  so 


RELIGIOUS  IDEALS  SI 

with  the  modern  Faust — the  Fanst  whom  Goethe 
saw  and  knew.  His  fall  comes  not  through  magic 
arts  that  fail  to  meet  his  soul's  longings,  or  sensual 
pleasures  whose  last  taste  is  hitterness.  His  fall 
is  to  come  whenever,  in  the  gradual  unfolding  of 
his  life's  plans,  he  shall  profess  himself  satisfied 
with  what  he  has  already  attained.  "  Then  let 
the  clock  stand  still;  his  time  is  o'er."  It  is  not 
his  mistakes  that  will  lose  his  soul.  Mistakes  are 
the  inevitable  incident  in  all  efforts  toward  some- 
thing better  than  has  hitherto  been  reached.  It 
is  the  renunciation  of  the  effort  itself,  the  lack 
of  accessibility  to  higher  hopes  and  higher  am- 
bitions, which  is  the  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost 
that  sets  the  seal  of  moral  death  upon  the  human 
soul. 

A  man  of  bad  antecedents  and  surroundings 
who  recognizes  that  they  are  bad,  has  higher  possi- 
bilities than  the  man  who  lives  under  much  better 
rules  but  sees  neither  need  nor  room  for  improve- 
ment. For  him  whose  ideals  are  ahead  of  his 
practice,  even  if  that  practice  is  low,  there  is  al- 
ways hope.  For  him  who  has  sunk  his  ideals  to 
the  level  of  his  practice,  even  if  that  practice  is 
high,  there  is  no  hope  at  all. 


82  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

"Two  men  went  up  into  the  temple  to  pray;  the  one  a 
Pharisee,  and  the  other  a  pubUcan. 

The  Pharisee  stood  and  prayed  thus  with  himself,  God,  I 
thank  thee,  that  I  am  not  as  other  men  are,  extortioners, 
unjust,  adulterers,  or  even  as  this  publican.  I  fast  twice  in 
the  week,  I  give  tithes  of  all  that  I  possess. 

And  the  publican,  standing  afar  off,  would  not  lift  up  so 
much  as  his  eyes  unto  heaven,  but  smote  upon  his  breast, 
saying,  God  be  merciful  to  me  a  sinner. 

I  tell  you,  this  man  went  down  to  his  house  justified  rather 
than  the  other." 

Are  we  going  to  rest  content  with  being  Phari- 
sees, or  are  we  really  trying  to  be  Christians? 
Let  each  of  us  look  into  his  own  heart  to-day,  and 
find  the  answer.  What  is  your  ideal  of  success 
in  life?  Is  it  to  become  a  reputable  member  of 
good  society,  and  achieve  substantial  results  in 
the  way  of  fortune,  family,  and  friends,  on  which 
you  can  look  with  increasing  complacency?  Or 
is  it  to  try  to  make  the  world  better  by  a  struggle 
which  will  be  full  of  dangers  and  mistakes  and 
misunderstandings,  and  in  which  to  the  very  end 
of  life  you  are  likely  to  remain  far  from  the  re- 
alization of  your  highest  hopes  ?  In  the  former 
case  you  are  a  Pharisee,  no  matter  how  much  you 
may  try  to  disguise  the  fact.  In  the  latter  case 
you  are  a  Christian,  no  matter  what  doubts  may 


RELIGIOUS  IDEALS  83 

hold  you  back  from  venturing  to  call  yourself  by 
that  name. 

If  you  choose  the  part  of  the  Pharisee  you  will 
probably  get  something  of  the  success  which  you 
desire;  but  in  the  very  process  of  getting  it  you 
will  become  constantly  narrower  and  meaner. 
Your  ideals,  limited  from  the  first,  will  tend  to 
become  more  limited  as  the  years  go  on.  You 
will  get  so  far  apart  from  the  big  movements  of 
human  thought  and  human  sympathy  that  you 
will  come  to  distrust  them  and  to  fear  them.  In 
all  efforts  for  moral  progress  you  will  become  an 
obstructionist  instead  of  a  leader.  Content  with 
your  position  in  the  front  ranks  of  society,  you 
will  seek  to  keep  things  where  they  are,  dreading 
a  movement  for  the  better  almost  as  much  as  you 
would  dread  a  movement  for  the  worse,  because 
any  movement  will  menace  the  life  of  sterile  satis- 
faction to  which  you  have  become  accustomed. 

If  you  choose  the  part  of  the  Christian,  your 
life  will  be  a  hard  one.  You  will  have  to  fight 
those  who  are  opposed  to  you  and  sometimes  be 
beaten,  which  is  bad  enough.  You  will  be  mis- 
understood by  those  who  should  be  on  your  side, 
which  is  worse.    You  will  make  mistakes  of  your 


84  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

own  in  jndiiinu:  wli{>ru  the  right  really  lies,  which 
is  worst  of  all.  IJiit  through  defeats  and  mistakes 
and  misunderstandings  you  will  all  the  time  be 
growing  into  something  larger  than  you  were  be- 
fore. You  yourself  indeed  will  no  more  be 
satisfied  with  your  powers  and  achievements  ten 
or  twenty  years  hence  than  you  are  at  the  begin- 
ning; for  your  ideals  of  what  a  man  should  be 
and  do  will  have  gro^vn  as  your  work  grows.  But 
others  about  you  will  feel  the  change  and  wall  be 
increasingly  ready  to  work  w^ith  you  and  under 
you.  To  you  they  will  look  for  leadership  and 
counsel  in  the  movements  that  are  really  great — 
the  movements  which  do  not  seek  to  advance  one 
man  at  the  expense  of  another,  but  to  carry  the 
wdiole  world  forw^ard  to  something  better  than  it 
has  know^n  in  the  past  You  may  not,  and  unless 
some  grave  emergency  arises  that  puts  the  insignia 
of  power  into  your  hands  you  probably  will  not, 
know  how  much  men  trust  you.  The  greatness 
of  the  Christian  is  just  as  unconscious  as  the  small- 
ness  of  the  Pharisee.  The  standards  and  ideals 
wdiich  help  him  to  be  great  prevent  him  from 
rating  his  own  achievements  as  highly  as  those 
about  him  are  glad  to  do.     But  far  though  they 


RELIGIOUS  IDEALS  85 

be  beyond  his  reach,  they  give  him  the  steadiness 
of  purpose  which  enables  him,  through  life  and 
through  death,  to  face  the  future  undisturbed 
and  confident. 

There  was  a  man  among  the  apostles  who,  more 
than  all  others,  had  tested  the  possibilities  of  both 
these  ways  of  living ;  and  he  it  is  who  speaks  most 
emphatically  of  them  all,  concerning  the  wrong- 
ness  of  the  one  and  the  Tightness  of  the  other. 
Paul  of  Tarsus  was  born  and  bred  a  Pharisee, 
under  conditions  which  gave  him  every  advantage 
for  working  out  life's  problems  on  that  basis  if 
the  thing  was  possible.  In  his  own  person  he 
combined  the  best  that  three  civilizations  could 
give — the  morals  of  the  Jews,  the  j)hilosophy  of 
the  Greeks,  the  law  of  the  Romans.  He  knew 
how  to  use  them  all ;  and  he  added  to  them,  from 
boyhood  up,  a  sort  of  hunger  for  righteousness, 
a  desire  to  do  as  well  as  he  could  the  work  which 
was  laid  upon  him — a  zeal  for  God,  to  use  his  own 
words,  though  not  according  to  knowledge.  But 
in  the  midst  of  his  career  as  a  Pharisee  he  was 
suddenly  brought  to  see  the  meaning  of  Christ's 
life  and  doctrine.  He  saw  that  a  man  could  not 
render  his  account  to  God  by  reckoning  up  his 


86  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

pood  deeds  as  so  many  credits  to  himself.  Tie 
saw  that  he  must  forget  himself  and  think  for 
otliers.  He  saw  that  he  must  forget  the  past  and 
look  to  the  future.  He  abandoned  the  attempt  to 
find  a  definite  standard  to  which  he  could  con- 
form and  be  satisfied  to  conform ;  and  he  accepted 
instead,  fully  and  unreservedly,  the  obligation  to 
do  everything  that  he  could  for  God  and  for  his 
fellow  men.  He  entered  upon  a  life  where  right- 
eousness was  not  measured  by  a  man's  success  or 
failure  in  keeping  rigid  rules,  but  by  his  single- 
minded  devotion  to  an  ideal  outside  of  himself 
which  inspired  him  to  larger  attempts,  and  in  the 
long  run  to  larger  performances,  than  any  system 
of  rules  could  have  contemplated.  That  his  own 
achievements  as  a  Christian  were  great,  he  could 
not  deny.  Even  before  his  death  they  were  be- 
ginning to  stand  out  large  on  the  pages  of  history. 
But  they  remained  so  small  in  proportion  to  his 
vision  of  what  he  wanted  to  do  that  they  never 
filled  his  mental  horizon  as  they  would  have  filled 
the  horizon  of  a  Pharisee.  Their  greatness  some- 
times served  him  as  a  means  of  casting  ridicule 
on  the  boastings  of  others  who  tried  to  make  their 
own  lesser  achievements  a  basis  on  which  to  erect 


RELIGIOUS   IDEALS  87 

monuments  to  tlieir  own  righteousness;  they  never 
tempted  him  to  erect  a  monument  to  himself. 
More  than  any  other  apostle  he  preached  the 
doctrine  of  justification  by  faith — the  doctrine 
that  a  man  is  saved  not  by  the  things  that  he  has 
done,  however  important  these  may  be  as  evidences 
of  his  purpose  in  life,  but  by  that  devotion  to 
things  outside  of  him  and  beyond  him  which 
should  dominate  his  whole  life  from  beginning  to 
end,  and  consecrate  it  to  the  service  of  God. 

Gentlemen  of  the  graduating  class:  To  the  col- 
lege man  more  than  to  any  one  else  this  broad 
view  of  Christian  duty  should  appeal.  He  of  all 
mankind  has  least  occasion  for  Pharisaic  com- 
placency. The  self-made  man,  who  by  his  own 
efforts  has  risen  from  the  bottom  of  the  ladder, 
may  have  a  certain  amount  of  excuse  for  dwelling 
on  his  own  achievements.  Such  as  they  are,  he 
can  at  least  claim  them  for  his  own.  You  can 
make  no  such  claim.  The  life  which  you  have 
lived  and  are  going  to  live  has  been  made  possible 
for  you  by  the  efforts  of  your  fathers.  What  you 
do  represents  for  the  most  part  not  an  achieve- 
ment but  an  indebtedness — an  indebtedness  which, 
wdth  God's  help,  you  are  going  to  repay  by  trans- 


88  r.ACCALAUKMATK  AI)I)HESS1':S 

mittiug  in  Uiru  to  your  sons  the  j)Ossibilitics  of 
wider  life  and  more  inti'lligeut  faitli. 

This  debt  to  the  past  and  this  duty  to  the  future 
are  things  which  we  have  tried  to  keep  in  view 
during  all  your  education  here,  Not  by  the  class- 
room alone  and  not  by  the  teaching  force  alone, 
but  by  the  whole  atmosphere  of  the  place  and  the 
inspiration  of  its  graduates,  dead  and  living,  we 
have  striven  to  take  you  outside  of  yourselves  and 
make  your  life  a  part  of  the  life  of  ages.  You 
have  not  come  here  solely  or  primarily  to  learn 
how  to  make  what  the  world  calls  a  success.  Many 
of  you  in  the  years  to  come  will  be  reproached 
with  the  fact  that  your  power  of  getting  money 
or  office  has  not  been  greatly  increased  during 
the  years  that  you  have  silent  in  this  place.  So 
far  as  this  reproach  is  based  upon  any  actual 
waste  of  our  time  in  idleness,  we  must  take  it 
severely  to  heart.  But  so  far  as  it  is  due  to  the 
fact  that  we  make  public  service  instead  of  self- 
service  the  measure  of  success,  we  may  well  glory 
in  the  reproach. 

In  science  the  pursuit  of  truth  is  more  im- 
portant than  the  pursuit  of  gain.  In  the  history 
of  every  nation  the  self-sacrifice  of  its  members 


RELIGIOUS   IDEALS  89 

counts  for  more  than  their  self-aggrandizement. 
The  true  worth  of  a  man  is  to  be  measured  not 
by  the  things  which  he  has  done  for  himself,  but 
by  the  things  which  he  has  done  for  the  world 
around  him  and  after  him.  Every  man  who  has 
consecrated  his  life  to  an  ideal  larger  than  he  can 
hope  to  compass  has  the  kind  of  faith  which  moves 
the  world;  whether  he  calls  it  faith  in  God,  or 
faith  in  duty,  or  shrinks  from  calling  it  by  any 
name  at  all  and  goes  on  living  for  his  fellow  men 
without  ever  being  able  to  formulate  the  reason 
why.  Each  man  finds  his  highest  spiritual  devel- 
opment, not  by  working  out  his  own  salvation 
alone  and  for  himself,  but  by  losing  the  thought 
of  self  in  the  thought  of  others.  This  is  the  Chris- 
tian life ;  this  is  the  faith  by  which  men  are  saved. 


THE    CHOICE    OF    A    FAITH 

"Believe  on   the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and   thou  shalt  be 
saved,  and  thy  house." 

As  we  see  what  the  world  is  doing,  in  science 
and  in  industry,  in  commerce  and  in  politics,  we 
all  wish  to  have  our  part  in  its  achievements. 
We  despise  the  man  who  is  content  to  stand  pas- 
sive while  so  much  active  life  is  going  on  about 
him.  We  desire  that  when  our  own  work  is  over 
— be  it  ten  years  hence,  or  twenty,  or  fifty — some 
tangible  result  may  stand  to  our  credit  in  the  great 
ledger  of  history.  Men  are  saved  by  what  they 
do ;  not  by  what  they  profess.  This  is  the  gi'eat 
underlying  belief  of  the  present  age;  and  it  is  a 
belief  which  finds  a  response  in  the  heart  of  every 
one  of  us. 

But  it  is  not  enough  to  get  things  done;  they 
must  be  done  right.  Done  to  stand  instead  of  to 
fall;  done  for  something  larger  and  more  lasting 
than  our  own  transient  selves.  To  make  our  work 
count  in  the  final  result,  it  must  have  purpose  as 

90 


THE  CHOICE  OF  A  FAITH  91 

well  as  eflSciency.  If  you  never  look  beyond  what 
you  are  doing,  you  never  can  be  sure  which  way 
it  is  going  to  tell.  If  you  care  for  nothing  but 
the  figures  of  the  day's  run,  you  go  wherever  the 
wind  carries  you — forward  one  day,  and  backward 
the  next.  To  reach  a  port  you  must  shape  your 
course  by  the  stars. 

The  very  splendor  of  the  modern  world's 
achievements  makes  it  liable  to  forget  this  neces- 
sity. It  becomes  so  absorbed  in  the  doing  of 
things  that  it  loses  its  sense  of  direction.  This 
is  why  we  say  that  the  present  age  needs  faith. 
Not  because  it  is  worse  than  previous  ages;  not 
because  it  is  less  earnest  or  reverent  than  previous 
ages ;  but  because  the  very  swiftness  of  to-day's 
current  and  the  joy  of  moving  with  it  makes  it 
the  more  constantly  necessary  to  measure  our 
progress  by  something  fixed  and  permanent,  in 
order  to  be  sure  that  we  are  going  forward  and 
not  backward.  The  man  of  faith  is  the  man  who 
shapes  his  course  by  the  stars  rather  than  by  the 
current,  and  who  looks  at  the  stars  oftenest  when 
the  current  runs  swiftest.  Small-minded  men  re- 
gard faith  as  a  theory ;  large-minded  men  use  it  as 
a  practical  working  power  to  get  things  done  and 


\y2  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

done  right.  What  faitli  inciiut  lo  I'aul  is  shown 
by  Paul's  accouut  of  what  it  did.  Through  faith 
men  '*  subdued  kingdoms,  wrouglit  righteousness, 
obtained  promises,  stopped  the  mouths  of  lions, 
quenched  the  violence  of  fire,  escaped  the  edge  of 
the  sword,  out  of  weakness  were  made  strong, 
waxed  valiant  in  fight,  turned  to  flight  the  armies 
of  the  aliens."  Gentlemen,  faith  is  the  one  thing 
in  the  world  which  will  enable  you  to  do  this.  It 
is  the  thing  which  will  prevent  you  from  being 
daunted  by  small  failures,  or  even  by  failures 
which  for  the  moment  may  seem  overwhelmingly 
large ;  the  thing  which  will  enable  you  to  accom- 
plish something  which  not  only  looks  worth  doing, 
but  is  worth  doing.  If  your  country  has  men  of 
faith  among  her  citizens,  she  will  be  saved ;  if  she 
has  not  men  of  faith,  no  amount  of  intellectual 
progress  or  material  wealth  can  preserve  her. 

But  what,  you  will  say,  has  all  this  to  do  with 
our  text  ?  How  will  belief  in  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  help  us  to  do  all  this  ?  Are  there  not  other 
and  plainer  ways  of  making  our  lives  count  for 
right  and  of  saving  our  country  from  its  enemies 
than  by  the  acceptance  of  Christianity  and  the 
things  for  which  Christianity  stands? 


THE  CHOICE  OF  A  FAITH  93 

Other  ways  there  doubtless  are.  By  many  roads 
men  come  to  the  feet  of  God.  I  do  not  suppose 
that  one  of  us  here  is  so  narrow-minded  as  to 
believe  that  all  good  is  bounded  by  the  limits  of  a 
single  creed,  or  all  salvation  wrought  by  means 
of  a  single  method.  As  we  look  back  on  the  heroic 
deeds  of  Roman  or  of  Greek,  as  we  behold  the  de- 
voted lives  of  followers  of  Buddha  or  of  Con- 
fucius, we  see  clearly  enough  that  the  faith  that 
looks  through  death  is  confined  to  no  one  church 
or  company.  But  I  cannot  agree  with  the  man 
who  goes  on  to  say  that  these  other  ways  are  sim- 
pler and  plainer  than  the  way  of  Christian  be- 
lief. Not  easier  has  it  been,  but  infinitely  harder, 
to  attain  saving  faith  through  philosophy  than 
through  Christianity.  Philosophy  works  through 
our  intellect;  Christianity  takes  hold  upon  our 
affections  and  ideals.  Philosophy  asks  us  to  assent 
to  certain  principles ;  Christianity  asks  us  to  take 
a  certain  kind  of  man  as  our  hero.  For  nineteen 
persons  out  of  twenty,  this  is  the  appeal  that 
counts.  Men  will  debate  forever  over  a  principle ; 
let  a  real  leader  come,  and  they  will  follow  him 
to  the  death. 

You  can  see  instances  of  this  in  your  college 


94  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

life.  Yon  will  rciiu'iiilKT  liow,  wlicn  you  came 
lu're  as  Freslmicn,  tlic  careers  of  some  of  the  upper 
class  men  took  hold  of  your  imagination.  You 
wanted  to  follow  in  their  footsteps.  It  seemed 
like  the  highest  prize  of  college  life  to  accomplish 
the  kind  of  things  that  they  had  accomplished. 
Whatever  such  men  did  was  a  power  for  good  or 
bad  through  the  whole  community.  As  the  years 
of  college  life  went  on,  and  your  own  class  began 
to  take  the  lead,  each  of  yon  found  men  whom 
you  were  proud  to  know  as  friends  and  whom  in 
your  hearts  you  desired  to  be  like.  The  influence 
of  these  men  u]X)n  you,  for  good  or  for  evil, 
counted  for  more  in  your  college  life  than  all 
you  learned  from  books  or  lectures,  from  col- 
lege sports  or  college  politics.  You  believed  in 
your  friends ;  you  became  like  them,  whether  you 
meant  to  or  not.  If  they  were  men  of  the  right 
stamp  your  college  course  has  been  a  success,  no 
matter  what  disappointments  it  may  have  con- 
tained. If  they  were  men  of  the  wn-ong  stamp 
your  college  course  has  failed  of  its  best  purpose. 
And  what  has  been  true  here  will  be  true  in  the 
world  afterward.  As  you  enter  upon  professional 
life  you  will  form  your  ideals  of  success,  not  from 


THE  CHOICE  OF  A  FAITH  95 

what  books  say  but  from  what  you  see  exemplified 
in  the  careers  of  men,  past  and  present.  In  law 
or  in  medicine,  in  business  or  in  politics,  you  will 
find  heroes  that  you  wish  to  be  like.  As  you  grow 
older,  by  your  choice  of  heroes  will  your  life's 
purpose  be  determined  and  dominated.  In  the 
world,  as  in  college,  a  strong  man  of  any  kind  will 
find  friends  and  followers.  Be  he  prize-fighter 
or  fanatic,  politician  or  millionaire,  philosopher 
or  Christian,  there  will  be  men  who  will  choose 
him  for  a  hero  and  stand  or  fall  by  the  choice. 

Nearly  nineteen  centuries  ago  there  was  a  typ- 
ical gathering  at  the  passover  at  Jerusalem.  A 
large  part  of  the  multitude  chose  as  its  hero  a 
man  who  rejDresented  physical  force  in  its  lawless 
exercise ;  and  when  the  governor  cried,  "  Whom 
will  ye  that  I  release  unto  you  ? "  they  said, 
"  Barabbas !  "  There  was  another  section  of  the 
community  which  stood  under  the  dominion  of 
fanaticism,  ready  to  be  moved  without  reason  by 
a  leader  that  appealed  to  their  emotions;  and 
when  Caiaphas,  the  high-priest,  said  that  it  was 
expedient  that  one  man  should  die  for  the  people, 
they  cried  with  a  loud  voice,  "  Crucify  him ! 
crucify  him !  "     There  was  a  smaller  but  more 


90  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

influential  section  that  cared  for  success  as  it  was 
embodied  in  material  prosix3rity  and  political 
jiower.  They  believed  in  Pontius  Pilate,  the 
Konian  governor.  lie  represented  the  really  suc- 
cessful man  whom  they  wished  to  imitate;  and 
when  Pontius  Pilate  found  it  convenient  to  wash 
his  hands  of  a  matter  of  which  he  disapproved, 
they  washed  their  hands  of  it  also.  Not  by  any 
of  these  groups,  nor  by  the  ideals  to  which  they 
clung,  was  the  world  to  be  saved.  Belief  in  Bar- 
abbas  and  the  things  Barabbas  represented  had 
already  been  the  means  of  destroying  the  nation's 
freedom  and  reducing  it  to  subjugation.  Belief 
in  Caiaphas  and  the  things  that  Caiaphas  repre- 
sented only  a  few  years  later  led  the  people  into 
a  desperately  mistaken  war  and  into  more  hope- 
less subjugation  than  ever  before.  Belief  in  Pilate 
and  the  things  that  Pilate  represented,  if  it  helped 
a  man  at  all,  helped  him  to  secure  the  prosper- 
ity of  his  body  at  the  expense  of  his  soul.  The 
thing  that  did  save  the  world,  the  thing  that  did 
leave  its  mark  on  history  forever,  the  thing  that 
represented  a  growing  force  and  helped  the  na- 
tions for  all  time,  came  from  yet  another  group, 
far   smaller   than   the   smallest   of   those   I   have 


I 


THE  CHOICE  OF  A  FAITH  97 

named — the  little  group  of  those  that  took  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  as  their  leader;  a  king  whose  king- 
dom was  not  of  this  world ;  a  man  whose  ideal  of 
success  was  in  devoted  service  to  others,  even 
though  that  success  led  to  the  cross. 

Does  America  to-day  believe  in  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  sufficiently  to  avoid  the  fate  of  the  Jews 
of  old,  or  is  it  to  be  given  over  to  the  worship  of 
Barabbas  and  Caiaphas  and  Pontius  Pilate? 

We  say  that  America  is  a  Christian  nation; 
and  I  verily  believe  that  there  is  more  of  the  spirit 
of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  in  the  daily  life  and  work 
of  the  American  people  than  there  is  in  any  other 
of  the  great  nations  of  the  world.  I  believe  that 
whenever  it  comes  to  a  great  crisis — political,  in- 
dustrial, or  moral — there  is  enough  of  the  spirit 
of  Christ  in  America  to  save  us.  But  though  we 
have  good  ground  for  hope,  we  are  very  far  short 
of  having  ground  for  complacent  assurance.  We 
have  only  to  look  at  the  facts  in  the  world  about 
us  to  see  how  far  the  American  people  is  from 
really  believing  in  Jesus  as  the  man  they  wish 
to  be  like  and  in  the  things  for  which  Jesus  stands 
as  their  ideals  of  success.  That  part  of  our  people 
which  turns  with  avidity  to  sensational  accounts 


9S  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

f)f  r(»l»l)t'rv  and  arson  and  nnirder  is  not  far  re- 
moved from  the  innltitnde  that  cried,  "  Not  this 
man,  bnt  Barabbas !  "  That  part  which  looks  to 
])hitform  or  press  for  appeals  to  its  passions,  and 
which  seeks  a  leader  who  can  give  voice  to  the 
promptings  of  its  own  prejndices  or  emotions,  has 
advanced  little  beyond  the  stage  of  those  who 
clamored  for  the  crucifixion.  And  that  part  of 
our  people  which,  thongh  more  respectable  than 
the  first  group  and  more  enlightened  than  the 
second,  is  nevertheless  content  to  make  prosperity 
in  business  or  politics  the  test  of  success,  and  to 
give  all  its  thoughts  to  the  attainment  of  tliat 
prosperity  by  any  means  not  too  grossly  incon- 
sistent with  respectability  or  enlightenment,  does 
not  differ  greatly  from  him  who  washed  his  hands 
of  the  whole  matter  that  was  the  most  momentous 
in  the  world's  history. 

Which  of  these  standards  is  yours  ?  Whom  are 
you  choosing  for  your  hero?  I  do  you  the  justice 
to  think  that  none  of  you  will  choose  Barabbas. 
Every  consideration  of  habit  and  interest  makes 
against  that  choice.  You  come  of  law-abiding 
ancestors ;  and  they  by  their  good  conduct  for 
many  generations  have  guarded  you  against  the 


THE  CHOICE  OF  A  FAITH  99 

danger  of  making  an  outlaw  your  object  of  wor- 
ship. Nor  do  I  believe  that  many  of  you  will  be 
found  in  the  group  that  follows  after  Caiaphas. 
You  have  seen  so  many  sides  of  life  and  have 
dra^vn  knowledge  from  so  many  sources  that  you 
are  protected  in  large  measure  against  the  danger 
of  a  fanatical  devotion  to  some  one  passion  or 
prejudice.  But  there  is  danger,  and  very  gi-ave 
danger,  that  without  knowing  it  you  will  enroll 
yourselves  among  the  followers  and  worshippers 
of  Pontius  Pilate.  The  air  is  full  of  influences 
which  lead  you  in  that  direction  without  your 
knowledge. 

In  these  last  months  the  whole  American  world 
has  been  shocked  by  the  revelations  of  immoral 
methods  in  the  conduct  of  business  and  politics  on 
the  part  of  men  who  had  enjoyed  the  respect  of 
the  community.  We  have  asked  ourselves  over 
and  over  again  how  it  was  possible  that  such  men, 
honorable,  high-minded,  and  self-respecting  to  all 
outward  appearance,  should  have  accepted  wrong 
customs  without  protest.  But  if  any  of  us  will 
look  at  his  own  present  and  prospective  tempta- 
tions, the  answer  is  not  far  to  seek.  The  moment 
we  choose  as  our  example  of  professional  success 


100  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

the  man  who  has  iiuulo  a  fortune  or  secured  an 
ortiee  or  achieved  a  reputation  with  the  world,  we 
tend  to  put  fortune  and  office  and  reputation  in 
the  foreground,  and  to  regard  the  question  of  how 
we  use  the  fortune  or  office  or  reputation  as  an 
unimportant  incident.  When  things  once  get  into 
this  shape  in  our  minds,  every  position  of  honor 
or  power  becomes  a  position  of  peril  to  the  soul. 
The  greater  the  crisis  we  are  called  upon  to  face, 
the  greater  the  ruin  that  follows.  In  the  quad- 
rangle of  Leland  Stanford  University  there  was 
a  magnificent  memorial  arch,  that  stood  as  a  monu- 
ment to  its  builder  no  less  than  to  its  designer. 
He  had  striven  for  effect,  and  he  obtained  it. 
One  day  there  came  an  earthquake  that  shook  the 
foundations ;  and  it  was  found  that  they  were  not 
of  solid  stone,  but  chips  and  rubble.  Perhaps 
this  man  built  no  worse  than  others ;  but  the  very 
loftiness  of  the  memorial  that  he  had  raised  served 
to  emphasize  the  ruin  that  he  had  wrought. 
There  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  Pontius  Pilate 
was  worse  than  a  hundred  other  Roman  governors ; 
but  it  fell  to  his  lot  to  have  his  work  really  tried 
before  the  Day  of  Judgment  in  the  sight  of  men 
as  well  as  of  God. 


THE  CHOICE  OF  A  FAITH  101 

Stand  for  the  doing  of  things,  by  all  means. 
Stand  for  the  doing  of  great  things  if  possible. 
But  never  let  the  greatness  of  the  thing  get  so  far 
into  the  foreground  as  to  obscure  the  purpose  for 
which  it  exists.  And  above  all  things,  let  the 
honest  intent  to  serve  others  have  a  larger  place 
in  your  life  than  the  things  you  are  trying  to  do 
for  yourself.  It  is  for  this  that  Jesus  stands. 
He  cared  as  much  for  deeds  as  any  one.  He  spoke 
straight  to  the  people  who  were  doing  the  world's 
work,  in  his  own  time  and  ever  afterward.  He 
was  a  practical  man,  who  took  things  as  he  found 
them  and  made  the  best  of  them — to  such  an  ex- 
tent that  this  was  made  a  reproach  to  him  by 
those  whose  range  of  vision  was  narrower  than 
his.  But  when  his  heart's  purpose  demanded  the 
sacrifice  of  his  life  and  the  imperilment  of  all 
appearance  of  tangible  success,  he  hesitated  not 
a  moment.  This  life  and  death  of  Christ  show 
what  Paul  means  by  faith.  It  is  not  belief  in 
a  formula;  it  is  not  an  abstract  idea  of  the  way 
in  which  the  universe  is  governed.  It  is  a  purpose 
which  dominates  a  man's  life;  strong  enough  to 
enable  him  to  get  things  done,  but  broad  enough 
and  far-reaching  enough  to  keep  the  man  larger 


102  BACCALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

lliau  his  works,  his  range  of  vision  wider  than  the 
territory  which  he  has  conquered,  his  readiness 
for  sacrifice  ever  growing  with  the  extent  of  his 
achievement  This  is  the  belief  on  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  that  saves  men  and  nations. 

As  we  look  hack  on  the  pages  of  history,  the 
men  whose  figures  rise  large  and  inspiring  are  not 
tliose  who  have  amassed  fortunes  or  won  battles  or 
conquered  empires;  but  those  who,  amid  the  hos- 
tility of  the  critics  and  the  indifference  of  the 
world  about  them,  have  strongest  stood  for  prin- 
ciple. The  battles  and  the  ambitions  of  a  Marl- 
borough— nay,  the  very  empire  of  a  Louis — pale 
before  the  majestic  constancy  of  purpose  of  Will- 
iam of  Orange.  In  the  gi-eat  drama  of  slavery 
and  secession  we  draw  our  largest  inspiration, 
not  from  the  brilliant  arguments  of  the  orators 
nor  the  brilliant  strategy  of  the  generals,  but  from 
the  patient  endurance  of  two  great,  heavy-hearted 
men  on  opposite  sides,  unlike  in  all  else  but  alike 
in  unselfish  devotion  to  principle  as  they  under- 
stood it — Lee  and  Lincoln.  What  man  of  you, 
when  the  choice  is  placed  squarely  before  him, 
would  not  prefer  the  immortality  of  William  to 
that  of  Louis  or  Marlborough?     Who  would  not 


THE  CHOICE  OF   A  FAITH  103 

choose  to  bear  the  burdens  of  a  Lee  or  a  Lincoln, 
rather  than  to  enjoy  the  honors  of  the  most  suc- 
cessful general  or  the  most  brilliant  orator  ?  And 
who,  when  he  sees  Christ  standing  before  the  judg- 
ment-seat of  Pilate,  would  not  throw  in  his  lot 
with  the  prisoner  who,  deserted  hj  his  friends 
and  scarce  able  to  keep  up  his  own  courage  for  the 
ordeal,  stands  out  at  that  moment  as  the  supreme 
revelation  of  God  to  man,  an  embodiment  of  the 
faith  that  is  to  save  the  world  ? 

Gentlemen  of  the  graduating  class :  When  you 
see  these  things  clearly,  you  know  where  you 
stand.  But  it  is  going  to  be  hard  to  see  things 
clearly.  "  The  world  is  too  nmch  with  us."  The 
necessity  for  making  a  living  keeps  our  minds  so 
bound  down  to  the  details  of  professional  success 
that  we  sometimes  forget  that  there  is  anything 
except  professional  success  to  live  for.  The  neces- 
sity of  conforming  our  habits  and  standards  to  the 
habits  and  standards  of  those  about  us,  in  order 
that  we  may  do  efficient  work,  makes  us  forget 
that  there  is  a  point  where  conformity  ceases  to 
be  a  virtue.  The  greater  the  measure  of  success 
we  attain  the  harder  it  sometimes  becomes  to  keep 
our   ideas   ahead   of   our    achievements.      If  you 


104  BA(TALAUREATE  ADDRESSES 

Mjiiit  to  liav(>  ill  yon  the  stuiT  tliat  iiinkos  licrocs, 
you  imust  begin  now.  As  tlic  earthquake  shock 
tests  the  building's  foundations,  so  will  the  great 
emergencies  of  life  test  the  material  which  we 
have  been  putting  into  our  lives  from  the  begin- 
ning. If  we  are  content  to  admire  the  men  who 
have  done  things,  no  matter  whether  for  them- 
selves or  for  others,  we  shall  be  making  our  life 
a  thing  of  show  rather  than  of  substance ;  good, 
perhaps,  in  outward  appearance,  but  wanting  in 
those  qualities  which  will  meet  God's  judgment, 
or  will  even  meet  men's  judgment  if  some  great 
crisis  gives  them  an  opportunity  to  know  what  we 
really  are.  But  if  we  care  for  those  who  have 
done  things  for  others  instead  of  for  themselves ; 
if  w'e  accustom  ourselves  to  regard  all  tangible 
success  as  a  means  of  service  rather  than  as  an 
end  in  itself;  if  we  delight  to  think  of  the  men 
and  women  who  have  left  the  world  better  for 
their  having  lived  in  it,  and  make  them  our  real 
heroes — then  are  we  laying  the  foundations  of  a 
life  which,  when  it  is  tested,  shall  stand  out  heroic, 
even  as  did  the  life  of  Jesus  the  Master.  Now, 
while  grave  temptation  is  far  distant,  is  the  time 
to    make    ready.      Now,    when    our    character    is 


THE  CHOICE  OF  A   FAITH  105 

plastic  and  when  our  very  failures  can  be  made 
to  serve  as  lessons;  now,  when  the  inspiration  of 
college  traditions  and  college  friendships  is  strong 
in  our  hearts ;  now,  when  our  life-work  lies  before 
us  to  make  and  mould  as  we  will — now  is  the  time 
to  make  choice  of  the  faith  which  will  enable  us 
so  to  use  the  things  temporal  that  we  lose  not  the 
things  eternal. 


TALKS  ON  OPENING   SUNDAYS  OF 
THE  COLLEGE  YEAR 


A    CimiSTIA^    DEMOCEACY 

"As  touching  brotherly  love  ye  need  not  that  I  write  unto 
you :  for  ye  yourselves  are  taught  of  God  to  love  one  another. 
And  indeed  ye  do  it  toward  all  the  brethren  which  are  in  all 
Macedonia:  but  we  beseech  you,  brethren,  that  ye  increase 
more  and  more;  and  that  ye  study  to  be  quiet,  and  to  do 
your  own  business,  and  to  work  with  your  own  hands,  as  we 
commanded  you;  that  ye  may  walk  honestly  toward  them 
that  are  without,  and  that  ye  may  have  lack  of  nothing.'! 

I  PROPOSE  to  speak  this  morning  of  the  char- 
acteristics of  a  Christian  democracy. 

Every  form  of  government  has  its  own  peculiar 
clangers  and  temptations.  Democracy  is  no  ex- 
ception, either  in  the  large  wbrld  of  national 
politics,  in  the  smaller  arena  of  municipal  govern- 
ment, or  in  the  yet  more  restricted  framework  of 
university  organization.  I  desire  to  set  forth 
some  of  the  special  evils  which  thus  beset  de- 
mocracy; showing  whence  they  arise,  how  they 
are  exemplified  in  college  life,  and  what  is  their 
bearing  on  our  future  as  a  nation. 

Do  not  misunderstand  me.  This  is  no  pes- 
simistic indictment  of  the  democratic  system, 
109 


110  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

which  I  believe  to  represent  the  best  form  of  gov- 
erninent  for  the  citizen  and  the  best  spirit  in 
which  to  train  the  stndent.  It  is  characteristic  of 
America ;  it  is  dominant  here  at  Yale.  Not  one 
word  would  I  say  which  might  lead  you  to  under- 
rate the  special  opportunities  for  character  devel- 
opment which  your  college  life  will  give  at  a  time 
when  these  opportunities  should  be  utilized  to  the 
utmost  for  yourselves  and  for  your  country.  Not 
one  word  would  I  say  which  might  seem  to  cast 
doubt  on  the  vitality  of  our  American  constitu- 
tion, at  an  hour  when  one  of  those  crimes  which 
are  incident  to  every  form  of  government  causes 
some  men  to  despair  of  the  efficiency  of  our  own. 
But  to  insure  the  right  use  of  these  privileges, 
it  is  necessary  to  be  on  our  guard  against  the 
WTong  uses.  Let  us  try  to-day  to  place  our- 
selves thus  on  guard — to  examine  some  of  the 
dangers  with  which  these  opportunities  are  at- 
tended. 

The  right  and  wrong  uses  of  democracy  are 
closely  connected  with  one  another.  The  spirit 
of  community  which  characterizes  American  col- 
lege life  has  its  possibilities  of  evil  as  well 
as  of  good.     It  may,  if  misdirected,  lead  us  to 


A  CHRISTIAN  DEMOCRACY  HI 

neglect  higher  standards  of  judgment  and  higher 
possibilities  of  development,  whether  furnished 
by  the  world's  sober  thought  or  by  the  dictates  of 
our  own  consciences.  When  a  man  breathes  an 
atmosphere  which  carries  him  outside  of  himself, 
the  very  inspiration  which  makes  him  lose  sight 
of  his  own  selfish  interests  often  leads  him  to 
forget  that  there  are  other  places  in  God's  uni- 
verse besides  the  one  whose  air  he  breathes,  and 
other  standards  larger  and  more  permanent  than 
the  momentary  judgment  of  those  who  are  about 
him.  To  these  standards  a  man  must  hold  him- 
self true,  and  must  rely  on  his  own  force  of  char- 
acter in  so  doing.  There  is  no  danger  that  the 
Yale  man  will  wrap  himself  in  that  spirit  of 
selfishness  which  would  say,  with  Cain :  "  Am  I 
my  brother's  keeper  ?  "  The  danger  is  rather  that 
he  may  forget  that  he  is  his  own  keeper,  respon- 
sible not  to  the  college  sentiment  alone,  but  to  the 
world  and  to  the  Lord  thereof;  that  in  a  false 
spirit  of  independence  which  denies  to  Caesar 
the  things  which  are  Csesar's,  he  may  withhold 
from  God  the  things  which  are  God's. 

Aristotle   has  said  that  no  small  part  of  our 
vices  are  but  the  excess  of  virtues.     Dante  has 


112  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

taken  nj)  this  idea,  and  has  in  immortal  words 
symbolized  the  end  of  those  who  allow  affection 
to  degenerate  into  lust,  prudence  into  avarice, 
generosity  into  prodigality,  impulsiveness  into 
violence,  or  healthful  appetite  into  gluttonous  ex- 
cess. What  is  strikingly  true  of  our  physical  de- 
sires and  our  feelings  as  individuals  is,  1  think, 
equally  true — though  less  easily  recognized — of 
those  social  sentiments  which  are  the  foundation 
of  modern  democracy  in  the  college  and  in  the 
world  at  large.  The  exaltation  of  college  purposes 
and  judgments  at  the  expense  of  the  individual, 
which  in  its  place  is  most  salutary,  may,  if  carried 
beyond  its  place,  become  a  menace  and  an  evil. 
The  very  fact  that  college  sentiment  at  Yale  is 
on  the  whole  so  sound  and  healthful  on  the  more 
fundamental  questions  of  general  morality  may 
tempt  you  to  lose  sight  of  its  deficiencies  and  its 
errors.  For,  like  all  things  human,  it  has  its 
imperfections,  and  very  serious  ones.  It  is  often 
narrow;  it  is  occasionally  blind.  It  frequently 
runs  so  far  counter  to  the  judgments  of  the  world 
as  to  lead  to  violations  of  propriety.  It  is  some- 
times allowed  to  stifle  the  voice  of  the  individual 
conscience,  and  tolerate  moral  wrong.     By  viola- 


A  CHRISTIAN   DEMOCRACY  113 

tions  of  propriety,  however  unconscious,  we  do 
harm  to  the  reputation  of  the  college,  and  form 
habits  which  will  interfere  with  our  best  success 
in  after  life.  By  violations  of  morality,  even 
though  they  be  equally  unconscious,  we  do  a  yet 
more  irrejiarable  injury  in  blunting  our  finer  in- 
stincts and  undermining  the  strength  which  we 
are  sure  to  need  if  we  would  preserve  our  Chris- 
tian honor  unsullied. 

Do  you  ask  for  instances  of  what  I  mean  ? 
Take  the  sports  and  enjoyments  which  form  so 
large  a  part  of  our  life.  That  a  man  cares  so 
much  for  his  college  as  to  forget  himself  is  a 
glorious  thing;  that  he  cares  so  much  as  to  ignore 
all  outside  standards  is  often  a  dangerous  one. 
We  may  become  so  absorbed  in  college  amuse- 
ment that  we  carry  it  to  a  point  where  it  dis- 
turbs the  public  peace ;  we  may  sometimes,  I  am 
sorry  to  say,  allow  it  to  become  an  offence  against 
public  decency.  Forgetfulness  may  be  the  reason 
which  in  either  case  explains  our  conduct;  we 
shall  be  much  mistaken  if  we  think  that  it  can 
excuse  it.  The  world  and  the  church  alike  insist 
on  having  men  who  will  not  thus  forget  them- 
selves. 


Ill  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

Or  a  man  may  become  so  interested  in  the 
athletic  successes  of  his  college  that  he  lets  his 
lovalty  find  vent  in  loud  talk,  at  the  expense  of 
courtesy  to  friends  of  other  colleges ;  or  in  bet- 
ting —  which  is,  in  the  majority  of  instances, 
simply  a  form  of  loud  talk,  -vvhicli  makes  less 
physical  noise  though  more  moral  disturbance,  and 
is,  therefore,  preferred  by  those  whose  ears  are 
better  trained  than  their  consciences.  From  this 
it  is  but  a  step  to  the  half -conscious  toleration  of 
unfair  methods  of  play — at  least  so  far  as  one's 
rivals  are  supposed  to  be  guilty  of  them.  When 
a  body  of  spectators  tries  to  make  itself  a  factor 
in  the  winning  of  games,  we  have  a  marked  in- 
stance of  this  unfairness.  There  is  a  wide  dis- 
tance between  that  spontaneous  cheering  which  is 
an  inspiration  to  good  play,  and  the  applause, 
more  or  less  concertedly  organized,  which  is  con- 
ceived with  the  purpose  of  influencing  the  result. 
The  player  who  depends  upon  such  applause  for 
inspiration  bears  a  strong  resemblance  in  his  moral 
fibre  to  the  man  who  depends  upon  whiskey  as  a 
stimulus  to  work.  The  spectator  who  indulges 
therein  casts  discredit  on  his  college  in  the  eyes 
of  the  world,  and   undermines  his  own  sense  of 


A  CHRISTIAN  DEMOCRACY  115 

fair  play  in  a  way  which  renders  worse  than 
nugatory  some  of  the  best  uses  of  athletic  sport  as 
a  whole. 

Again,  a  man  may  become  so  loyal  to  his  class- 
mates and  associates  that  he  accepts  without  ques- 
tion, in  dealing  with  other  classes  or  with  the 
members  of  the  faculty,  principles  of  conduct 
which  were  characteristic  of  a  state  of  society 
which  we  have  now  outgrown.  Physical  fights 
between  classes  have  ceased;  but  bodies  of  men 
in  one  class  do  not  always  assume  the  full  obli- 
gations of  gentlemanly  courtesy  in  dealing  with 
members  of  another  class.  The  old  antagonism 
between  students  and  faculty  is  no  longer  acute; 
but  methods  of  deceit  and  easy  tolerance  of  un- 
truth, which  were  the  outcome  of  that  hostility, 
have  survived  into  the  present  age,  and  tempt 
many  a  man  to  sacrifice  his  honor  for  the  sake 
of  getting  a  degree  a  few  months  earlier — a  paltry 
mess  of  pottage,  indeed,  for  which  to  sell  one's 
birthright — while  the  men  who  hold  true  stand- 
ards on  this  matter  are  passed  by  as  quixotic,  and 
forced  to  work  in  that  moral  isolation  which  is  of 
all  burdens  the  hardest. 

This  is  not  peculiar  to  Yale,  nor  to  the  modern 


116  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

college  coiiiiminitv.  It  is  easy  to  read  between 
the  lines  tliat  tlie  ehuroli  at  Thessalonica  had 
mauy  points  of  resemblance,  in  the  spirit  that 
animated  it,  to  Yale  University  as  it  exists  at 
present.  It  had  the  virtues  connected  with  the 
democratic  spirit — brotherly  love,  faith,  power — 
that  gave  its  members  such  reputation  through- 
out Greece  and  Macedonia  that  they  became  an 
example  to  all  men.  But  side  by  side  with  these 
virtues,  which  Paul  commends  to  the  fullest  de- 
gree, they  had  their  temptations  and  vices,  which 
are  not  unknown  to  the  democratic  communities 
of  the  present  day.  They  found  it  no  easy  matter 
to  be  quiet.  They  were  so  occupied  with  other 
people's  business  that  they  were  not  always  ready 
to  do  their  own.  There  was  far  better  assurance 
that  they  would  deal  generously  with  those  of 
their  own  communion  than  honestly  toward  them 
that  were  without.  What  was  true  of  the  church 
at  Thessalonica  was  true  on  a  larger  scale  of  the 
Jews  in  the  time  of  Christ.  They  were  full  of 
loyalty  to  one  another  and  to  the  glorious  tradi- 
tions of  their  past.  In  spite  of  worldly  circum- 
stance, they  never  lost  faith  in  the  messages  which 
God  had  delivered  to  them.     But  this  very  loyalty 


A  CHRISTIAN  DEMOCRACY  117 

and  public  spirit  led  them  to  disregard  outside 
standards  and  outside  possibilities.  They  were 
so  bound  up  in  traditions  that  they  slavishly  kept 
within  their  letter  instead  of  gaining  growth  in 
their  spirit.  The  newer  and  wider  inspiration 
which  should  have  helped  them  they  rejected  with 
scorn.  As  a  consequence,  the  very  intensity  of 
their  faith  degenerated  into  blind  confidence  and 
became  their  ruin  instead  of  their  salvation.  In 
rejecting  the  breadth  of  sympathy  and  knowledge 
which  Jesus  offered,  they  brought  inevitable  de- 
struction on  their  heads. 

The  same  combination  of  strength  and  of  weak- 
ness, of  power  and  of  danger,  is  seen  in  the  life 
of  the  American  people  at  the  present  day.  In- 
tensely patriotic,  confident  in  ourselves  and  in  our 
future,  proud  of  our  traditions,  strong  in  the  ac- 
ceptance of  those  obligations  which  we  recognize 
as  binding,  we  are  not  without  the  defects  which 
go  with  these  good  qualities.  Our  confidence  often 
takes  the  form  of  noisy  self-assertion.  We  have 
scant  respect  for  standards  of  propriety  of  con- 
duct which  are  based  on  an  experience  wider  than 
our  own.  We  are  short-sighted  in  our  conception 
of  what  constitutes  true  success ;  and,  outside  of  a 


118  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

somewhat  narrow  range  of  recognized  obligations, 
we  are  unscrupulous  about  \\w  inctliods  which 
we  tolerate  in  its  pursuit.  Those  who  emphasize 
the  need  of  a  wider  study  of  the  lessons  of  his- 
tory, or  a  profounder  moral  purpose,  are  either 
stigmatized  as  hypocrites  or  ridiculed  as  vision- 
aries. 

What  is  to  be  the  outcome  ?  Are  our  insti- 
tutions to  become,  in  the  words  of  Bulwor,  the 
victims  of  the  very  prosperity  which  they  have 
created  ?  I  do  not  for  one  moment  believe  it ;  and 
yet  the  danger  is  serious  enough  to  make  it  fool- 
hardy to  shut  our  eyes  in  its  face.  America  needs, 
as  she  never  needed  them  before,  men  who  are 
fully  imbued  with  the  love  for  all  that  is  best  in 
her  history;  men  who  have  the  real  pride  which 
will  not  despair  of  the  republic  even  in  a  time 
like  this,  when  the  murder  of  her  chief  magistrate 
leads  weaker  men  to  doubt  the  vitality  and  per- 
manence of  her  institutions;  men  who  cherish 
these  institutions  less  blindly,  but  more  truly,  be- 
cause they  at  the  same  time  reverence  the  good 
manifested  in  other  places  and  times,  and  possess 
the  sturdy  independence  which  will  bring  the  pub- 
lic sentiment  of  the  country  up  to  their  own  best 


A  CHRISTIAN   DEMOCRACY  119 

conceptions.     The  strength  of  democracy  must  be 
vivified  with  the  spirit  of  Christianity. 

It  has  been  well  said  that  a  university  is  not 
a  school  but  an  atmosphere.  Yale's  atmosphere 
is  by  tradition  democratic  and  Christian.  Let  us 
take  care  that  these  two  qualities  become  bound 
into  more  and  more  vital  connection.  We  are 
preparing  ourselves  to  be  responsible  members  of 
a  free  commonwealth.  Let  us  train  ourselves  for 
the  responsibilities  which  attach  to  freedom — the 
"  glorious  liberty  of  Christ,"  without  which  de- 
mocracy has  been  a  transient  form  and  freedom 
a  means  of  self-destruction.  Thus  shall  we  make 
our  college  and  our  country  better  for  our  having 
lived  in  them. 


PUBLIC    APPKOVAL    AS    A    MORAL 
FORCE 

"lie  that  receiveth  a  prophet  in  the  name  of  a  prophet 
shall  receive  a  prophet's  reward;  and  he  that  receiveth  a 
righteous  man  in  the  name  of  a  righteous  man  shall  receive 
a  righteous  man's  reward." 

Theee  are  two  distinct  ways  in  which  we  can 
set  out  to  do  good :  one  direct,  and  the  other  in- 
direct. We  may  do  good  directly  by  our  right 
actions  and  clear  thoughts.  We  may  do  good 
indirectly  by  our  approval  of  such  actions  and 
thoughts  in  others.  The  direct  doing  of  good  has 
been  inculcated  by  every  religious  leader.  The 
Confucian,  tlio  Pliarisee,  the  Stoic,  have  all  set 
before  them  a  high  standard  of  individual  right- 
eousness. It  has  been  reserved  for  Christ  and  the 
Christian  church  to  lay  proper  stress  on  the  in- 
direct good  which  a  man  can  accomplish,  not  by 
his  deeds  as  an  individual,  but  by  the  spirit  in 
which  he  meets  the  members  of  the  community 
about  him. 

120 


FORCE  OF  PUBLIC  APPROVAL     121 

I  do  not  know  that  we  should  go  to  the  length 
of  saying  that  this  is  the  most  important  part  of 
the  good  which  we  can  do  in  this  life,  but  I  am 
quite  certain  that  it  is  the  part  which  most  needs 
emphasis  at  the  present'  day.  It  is  the  part  of  a 
man's  work  and  influence  which  he  is  least  likely 
to  rate  at  its  full  value.  The  direct  results  of  his 
thinking  and  action  he  is  prone  to  over-estimate ; 
and  as  he  looks  back  upon  them  in  years  past 
he  is  often  disappointed  to  find  that  they  have 
amounted  to  so  little.  The  indirect  effect  which 
his  approval  has  had  upon  other  men  is  some- 
thing which  he  fails  to  appreciate  at  the  time. 
But  it  may  afterward  come  home  to  him  with 
startling  force  when  some  incident  shows  him 
how  acts  of  sympathy  or  friendship  which  he 
has  perhaps  wholly  forgotten,  helped  to  give  direc- 
tion and  purpose  to  the  lives  of  others ;  or  how  his 
thoughtless  acquiescence  in  practices  and  stand- 
ards which  he  in  his  heart  knew  to  be  wrong, 
has  helped  to  fix  upon  others  habits  which  a  life's 
hard  experience  has  been  unable  to  eradicate. 

The  importance  of  public  approval  as  a  moral 
force  is  seen  in  every  form  of  society  and  in 
every  stage  of  the  world's  history.     The  lines  of 


122  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

achievement  which  \\'\n  this  approval  bring  out 
the  best  talents  of  those  wlio  ])ursiic  them.  In 
communities  which  regard  military  glory  as  tlie 
highest  distinction  great  soldiers  are  developed. 
In  communities  which  value  oratory  and  like  to 
listen  to  debate  the  gift  of  persuasive  speech  is 
cultivated  in  tlie  highest  degree.  Tn  communities 
which  deem  money-making  the  best  measure  of  a 
man's  success  and  efficiency,  business  talent  is 
stimulated  to  the  utmost,  and  some  other  talents 
equally  valuable  to  the  race  are  correspondingly 
neglected.  For  the  accomplishment  of  our  friends' 
best  work  our  sympathy  and  enthusiasm  are  an 
essential  basis.  The  hero  is  apt  to  leave  his  mis- 
sion imperfectly  fulfilled  unless  he  can  find  a  re- 
sponse to  his  heroic  deeds  in  the  hearts  of  his 
followers.  The  audience  has  as  much  to  do  with 
the  success  of  the  play  as  the  actor;  and  in  order 
to  have  good  plays  the  audience  must  have  a 
healthy  preference  for  what  is  sound  rather  than 
for  what  is  diseased.  It  was  the  large  body  of 
intelligent  theatre-goers  in  the  Athens  of  Sopho- 
cles or  the  London  of  Shakespeare  which  brought 
out  in  such  ample  measure  those  qualities  of  dra- 
matic construction  and  movement  which  authors 


FORCE  OF  PUBLIC  APPROVAL  123 

who  have  addressed  a  less  responsible  public  have 
in  vain  tried  to  imitate. 

What  is  true  of  the  vrorld  at  large  is  conspicu- 
ously true  of  a  place  like  Yale,  where  the  spirit  of 
community  life  and  common  interest  has  been 
most  strongly  marked.  The  influences  which  affect 
you  most  during  your  life  here  are  not  to  be  found 
in  the  particular  books  that  you  study,  nor  even 
the  particular  men  whom  you  meet.  They  are  the 
result  of  the  general  spirit  of  the  place,  which  you 
breathe  in  just  as  insensibly  as  you  breathe  the 
air  about  you,  but  which  may  make  you  intel- 
lectually and  morally  strong  or  intellectually  and 
morally  weak,  according  as  this  atmosphere  car- 
ries ozone  or  miasma.  And  this  atmosphere  is 
for  the  most  part  what  you  yourselves  make  it. 
For,  though  college  traditions  have  a  weight 
which  you  recognize,  and  though  the  body  of 
alumni  of  the  college  throughout  the  country 
exercises  a  guiding  and  restraining  force  upon 
the  judgments  of  the  undergraduate,  the  fact  re- 
mains that  the  .primary  responsibility  for  college 
sentiment  rests  with  the  students.  If  your  stand- 
ards are  helpful,  your  ambition^^  high?  your  recog- 
nition  keen   for   what   is   good    in   intellect    and 


124  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

morals  and  religion,  then  will  the  atmosphere  be 
a  s(niml  and  a  Christian  one.  Upon  each  of  you 
restvS  the  responsibility  for  taking  his  share  in 
this  work  of  moral  elevation  and  stimulus.  And 
you  may  feel  sure  that  nothing  which  you  can  do, 
now  or  hereafter,  is  likely  to  have  a  more  lasting 
influence  upon  your  own  character  and  that  of 
your  fellow  men. 

If  I  were  allowed  to  give  but  one  set  of  sug- 
gestions for  our  life  and  work  here,  I  think  I 
should  say  this :  Let  us  keep  our  eyes  always  open 
for  what  is  noble  and  for  what  is  inspiring.  When 
we  see  any  man  who  is  doing  good  work  in  any 
of  these  ways  let  us  give  him  approval  and  sym- 
pathy and  encouragement.  We  may  find  it  hard 
to  do  right  ourselves;  let  us  not  on  that  account 
withhold  our  tribute  of  appreciation  from  those 
who  have  succeeded  in  their  efforts.  Nay,  let  us 
be  all  the  more  unreserved  in  our  approval  because 
we  know^  how  hard  a  thing  they  have  done.  We 
may  and  probably  shall  find  it  impossible  to  be 
prophets  ourselves,  to  see  clearer  than  others  have 
seen;  but  let  us  for  that  reason  all  the  more  ear- 
nestly strive  to  recognize  the  spirit  of  prophecy 
where  we  find  it. 


FORCE  OF  PUBLIC  APPROVAL  125 

I  am  not  suggesting  that  you  should  express  an 
approval  which  you  do  not  really  feel.  Any  such 
conventional  expression  of  approbation  is  a  sham. 
If  you  say  you  like  a  thing  when  you  do  not  really 
like  it,  any  man  will  detect  the  false  ring  in  your 
voice  and  manner.  Any  such  forced  approval  is 
cant.  The  fact  that  a  man's  motives  in  proffering 
this  approval  may  he  good  does  not  make  it  of 
any  real  service.  Nor  do  I  urge  that  you  should 
strain  a  point  unduly  in  order  to  bring  the  men 
of  character  and  inspiration  into  clubs  and  socie- 
ties where  they  would  not  otherwise  naturally 
belong.  If  your  society  is  so  constituted  that  it 
wants  that  kind  of  man  and  can  enjoy  his  pres- 
ence, so  much  the  better  for  the  society  and  for 
him.  It  means  that  that  organization  has  a  future 
of  distinction,  and  that  every  member  is  helped 
by  belonging  to  it.  But  if  the  society  does  not 
want  this  man  and  takes  him  simply  as  an  act  of 
conventional  righteousness — to  acquire  merit,  as 
Kipling's  East  Indian  would  say — then  it  does 
relatively  little  good  either  to  the  man  or  the 
society,  and  does  some  positive  harm  by  making 
the  outward  and  visible  symbol  of  recognition  take 
the  place  in  the  public  mind  of  the  real  recogni- 


126  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

tion  "which  is  the  only  thing  that  a  man  cares  for. 
The  prophet's  reward  or  tlie  righteous  man's  re- 
ward, which  is  promised  by  the  text,  is  not  the 
reward  of  the  society  leader,  or  of  the  general,  or 
of  the  business  man.  It  is  the  reward  of  real 
appreciation.  What  the  prophet  needs  is  hearers 
for  his  message ;  what  the  righteous  man  needs 
is  men  who  will  cooperate  in  his  work.  If  the 
society  system  is  dominated  by  men  of  this  char- 
acter, so  much  the  better  for  the  societies.  But 
the  social  honor  must  of  necessity  come  as  an  in- 
cident or  consequence  of  such  recognition,  and 
not  as  a  substitute  for  it.  Give  your  approval  to 
what  is  right  and  inspiring  when  you  feel  that 
approval.  Thus  will  you  provide  the  real  help 
and  the  real  crown  that  the  best  men  care  for. 
Thus  will  you  make  a  public  sentiment  which 
shall  be  independent  of  external  signs  and  sym- 
bols, and  give  to  the  talents  of  the  best  men  a  field 
which  is  necessary  for  their  fullest  exercise. 

The  opportunity  which  is  before  you  to-day  is 
an  exceptional  one.  The  college  community  is 
still  small  enough  for  each  man's  influence  to 
count  as  a  factor  in  shaping  the  general  judg- 
ment ;  and  yet  it  has  become  large  enough  to  give 


FORCE  OF  PUBLIC  APPROVAL     127 

that  college  judgment  and  college  sentiment  a 
great  influence  on  the  future  of  the  country.  You 
are  not  in  danger  of  having  the  effect  of  your  in- 
dividual standards  lost,  as  they  might  be  lost  in 
a  city  like  New  York  or  London;  nor  are  you,  on 
the  other  hand,  in  danger  of  having  your  sphere 
of  influence  restricted,  as  it  might  be  if  your  life 
lay  within  the  limits  of  an  isolated  village.  You 
are  in  a  community  where  thought  is  free  enough 
to  give  you  the  largest  liberty  in  expressing  your 
ideas,  and  yet  where  social  standards  and  social 
ideals  are  strong  enough  to  make  those  ideas  of 
yours  a  binding  force  upon  your  fellow  men. 

The  standard  proposed  by  the  text  is  a  practical 
and  constructive  one,  which  it  is  not  beyond  human 
power  to  realize.  It  represents  a  gospel  of  hope 
rather  than  of  discouragement ;  not  the  cold  teach- 
ing of  a  critical  philosophy,  but  an  essentially 
Christian  standard,  which  helps  us  to  rise  above 
our  failures.  Any  conception  of  duty  which  falls 
short  of  this  is  likely  to  end  in  weariness.  You 
are  all  probably  beginning  the  year  with  good 
resolutions  and  with  high  aims;  but  unless  your 
fate  is  very  different  from  the  common  lot  of  your 
fellow  men,  comparatively  few  of  these  resolutions 


128  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

will  be  consistently  oarvicMl  out,  and  fewer  still 
of  these  aims  will  find  conii)k'te  or  nnniixed  re- 
alization. If  you  measure  your  success  in  the 
intellectual  or  moral  life  by  what  you  have  ac- 
tually accomplished  in  these  respects,  you  will  be 
discouraged.  The  only  man  wdio  succeeds  in 
keeping  in  large  measure  all  his  good  resolutions 
is  the  man  of  somewhat  w'ooden  temperament, 
who  has  few  imforeseen  impulses  and  few  living 
temptations  to  deviate  from  rules.  If  your  stand- 
ards are  no  higher  than  those  of  the  scribe  or  the 
Pharisee,  the  Stoic  or  the  Confucian,  you  will  be 
tempted  to  regard  him  as  most  righteous  who  has 
broken  the  fewest  positive  laws ;  and  if  your  tem- 
perament is  an  impulsive  one,  you  will  be  tempted 
to  rate  your  own  possibilities  unduly  and  dis- 
couragingly  low.  But  this  judgment  falls  short 
of  the  Christian  standard  and  the  Christian  way 
of  looking  at  things.  ISTot  by  keeping  the  letter 
of  a  law  made  for  us  by  some  one  else,  but  by 
helping  to  form  part  of  a  living  spirit  and  a 
living  church,  do  we  find  the  full  measure  of 
Christian  activity.  The  cup  of  water  given  in 
Christ's  name,  the  words  and  acts  of  encourage- 
ment to  others,  all  the  more  valuable  because  they 


FORCE  OF  PUBLIC  APPROVAL  129 

were  not  intended  as  moral  lessons,  are  things 
whose  jDositive  and  permanent  influence  defies  any 
attempt  to  measure  it.  Laws  may  be  broken  in 
spite  of  our  best  efforts;  good  resolutions  may 
serve  only  as  monuments  of  our  inability  to  keep 
them;  but  the  daily  deeds  of  helping  good 
men  because  they  are  good,  or  of  shrinking  from 
bad  things  because  they  are  bad,  have  a  perma- 
nent and  ever-widening  effect,  and  leave  some- 
thing to  a  man's  credit  which  will  last  for- 
ever. It  is  these  little  acts  of  Christianity  that 
make  the  world  a  good  place  to  live  in;  it  is 
these  little  acts  that  count  for  most  in  making 
a  man  ready  to  be  received  in  heaven.  When 
the  Son  of  Man  shall  come  in  his  glory,  and 
all  the  holy  angels  with  him,  men  shall  be  ad- 
judged righteous  and  counted  worthy  to  sit  on  the 
king's  right  hand,  not  because  of  their  conformity 
to  rules  of  law  or  of  their  conscious  works  of 
philanthropy,  but  because  they  have  ministered 
unto  the  Lord  when  naked  and  hungry  and  sick 
and  in  prison.  "  And  when  the  righteous  shall 
say.  Lord,  when  saw  we  thee  an  hungered,  and 
fed  thee ;  or  thirsty,  and  gave  thee  drink  ?  when 
saw  we  thee  a  stranger,  and  took  thee  in  ?  or  naked. 


130 


TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 


and  clothed  thee?  or  when  saw  we  thee  sick,  or 
in  prison,  and  came  unto  thee?  Tlio  king  shall 
answer  and  saj  unto  them,  Inasmuch  as  ye  have 
done  it  unto  one  of  the  least  of  these  my  hrethren, 
ve  have  done  it  unto  me." 


EESPONSIBILITY  TO  OURSELVES  AND 
TO    OTHERS 

"And  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up  from  the  earth,  will  draw  all  men 
unto  me." 

A  MAN  who  wishes  to  do  his  duty  in  the  world 
has  two  tasks  before  him.  He  must  work  out  his 
own  life's  problems,  and  he  must  help  those  about 
him  to  work  out  theirs.  To  attain  the  former 
end  he  must  keep  his  heart  pure,  his  moral  stand- 
ards untainted,  and  his  independence  of  judg- 
ment unclouded.  To  attain  the  latter,  he  must 
enter  into  the  feelings  of  those  about  him,  must 
understand  their  ambitions  and  their  temptations, 
must  care  for  them  and  the  things  for  which  they 
care.  He  must  make  their  life  a  part  of  his  life 
in  order  to  be  able  to  lift  them  up  to  a  higher 
level. 

^Neither  of  these  results  is  any  too  easy  to 
attain  by  itself;  but  the  combination  of  the  two 
is  infinitely  harder  than  either  alone.  For  the 
personal  qualities  which  help  a  man  to  do  one  of 
these  halves  of  his  life-work  are  apt  to  stand  in 
131 


132  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

Lis  wav  when  it  comes  to  the  other  half.  The 
mail  of  clear  iiitellect  and  Avell-balanced  judgment 
finds  it  comparatively  easy  to  maintain  indepen- 
dence of  thought  and  purity  of  life ;  but  these  same 
intellectual  qualities  make  it  more  difficult  for  him 
to  enter  into  the  trials  and  sufferings  of  his  fellow 
men.  He  sometimes  finds  it  hard  to  feel  sym- 
pathy; he  almost  always  finds  it  hard  to  express 
it;  and,  lacking  this  power  of  sympathy,  he  lacks 
the  ability  to  influence  those  about  him.  His 
purity  is  like  the  purity  of  white  marble :  spotless, 
but  not  vivifying.  On  the  other  hand,  the  man 
who  is  by  nature  sympathetic,  quick  to  feel  every 
trial  and  every  aspiration  of  those  about  him, 
gains  thereby  an  enormous  power  over  their  lives. 
But  he  is  by  the  same  token  subject  in  the  high- 
est degree  to  every  temptation  which  besets  his 
friends;  and  even  if  he  keeps  his  own  life  pure, 
he  finds  it  hard  to  insist  upon  general  standards 
of  purity  higher  than  those  which  prevail  in  the 
community  about  him.  He  makes  so  much  allow- 
ance for  others'  weakness  that  he  dares  not  de- 
mand of  others,  or  even  of  himself,  those  efforts 
which  are  needed  to  convert  that  weakness  into 
strength. 


I 


RESPONSIBILITY  TO  OTHERS  133 

Many  a  religious  reformer,  seeing  these  tempta- 
tions and  possibilities  of  contamination  which 
beset  a  man  living  a  life  of  activity  among  his 
fellows,  has  tried  to  withdraw  his  disciples  from 
contact  with  the  people.  Hermits  have  thought 
to  find  salvation  by  living  in  caves  or  on  pillars. 
Monks  have  retired  into  cloisters,  where  they 
might  be  secluded  from  the  tumults  and  tempta- 
tions of  the  world  outside.  Many  Buddhists,  and 
not  a  few  Christians,  have  felt  so  strongly  the 
contamination  incident  to  an  active  life  that  they 
have  regarded  withdrawal  from  physical  exist- 
ence as  constituting  the  goal  of  religious  devotion. 
But  this  was  not  the  teaching  of  Jesus  of  Naza- 
reth ;  nor  does  it  represent  the  true  Christian 
conception  of  life.  The  idea  of  obtaining  salva- 
tion for  one's  self  by  withdrawing  from  con- 
tact with  one's  fellow  men  is  distinctly  unchris- 
tian. It  may  make  it  easier  to  keep  a  man's 
standards  rigid  if  he  is  placed  in  a  position  where 
he  is  under  no  temptation  to  deviate  from  them. 
It  may  render  it  less  difficult  to  pray  if  a  man 
lives  in  a  cloister,  where  there  is  nothing  else  to 
do  except  to  pray.  But  this  sheltered  and  pro- 
tected life  is  not  worthy  of  the  citizens  of  a  Chris- 


134  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

tian  commonwealth;  nor  is  this  withdrawnl  from 
temptation  equivalent,  in  the  sight  of  man  or  of 
God,  to  a  square  meeting  and  resistance  of  temp- 
tation in  the  performance  of  a  man's  whole  duty. 
There  is,  I  think,  little  danger  that  many  of 
you  will  go  to  this  extreme.  The  spirit  of 
asceticism  —  of  withdrawal  from  the  world  in 
order  that  a  man  may  live  his  own  life — is  not 
widely  prevalent  at  the  present  day.  Far  more 
prevalent  is  the  opposite  error — the  error  of  easy 
tolerance,  which  leads  a  man  to  think  that  because 
he  is  a  member  of  a  community  with  interests 
and  activities  of  its  own,  he  is  justified  in  accept- 
ing the  standards  set  by  that  community  in  mat- 
ters of  intellect  and  morals.  "  When  in  Rome  do 
as  the  Romans  do,"  has  become  a  proverb.  Many 
a  man  who  goes  into  his  profession  with  high 
ideals  falls  away  from  them  after  a  time,  and  be- 
comes convinced  that  if  he  sets  himself  up  to  be 
better  than  his  fellows  he  simply  spoils  his  own 
chances  of  success,  without  the  hope  of  accomplish- 
ing any  real  good.  When  such  a  man  enters 
politics  he  is  content  to  use  his  influence  in  behalf 
of  keeping  fair  men  in  office,  and  having  work 
as   honestly   done   as  the  general  system  allows. 


RESPONSIBILITY  TO  OTHERS  135 

without  countenancing  any  efforts  to  reform  the 
system  or  improve  the  principles  of  the  nation. 
When  he  enters  business  he  is  content  to  abide  by 
the  general  rules  of  money-making  which  his 
associates  have  set,  without  striving  to  maintain 
his  own  ethical  standards  and  elevate  the  stand- 
ards of  those  about  him.  And  even  when  he 
comes  face  to  face  with  a  moral  question,  he  is 
apt  to  take  the  general  judgment  of  the  community 
as  a  sufficient  warrant  for  tolerating,  if  not  for 
actually  approving,  practices  which  fall  short  of 
the  highest  standard  of  honor  and  of  unselfish- 
ness. 

Of  course  there  is  some  excuse  to  be  made  for 
this  way  of  looking  at  things.  A  man  cannot 
attempt  to  ignore  all  the  judgments  of  the  com- 
munity and  run  counter  to  all  its  prejudices.  If 
he  does  this  indiscriminately  and  without  reason, 
he  destroys  his  own  influence  and  accomplishes 
nothing.  But  this  does  not  mean  that  he  must 
accept  all  its  judgments  and  fall  in  with  all  its 
prejudices.  If  he  does  this,  he  makes  his  position 
as  a  member  of  the  community  an  excuse  for  not 
doing  his  duty  by  that  community.  The  Chris- 
tian idea  is  that  a  man  should  be  in  the  world, 


136  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

living  its  life  nnd  sviniialliizinu'  willi  it,  but  keep- 
ing his  own  judgiiu'iit  unhiiuUMl  and  his  own 
heart  unsullied.  Christ  sought  no  artificial  badge 
of  distinction  from  his  fellows.  lie  wore  no  robe 
of  camel's  hair.  lie  did  not  go  into  the  wilderness 
to  preach ;  but  he  preached  in  the  fisliing-boat  and 
the  nuirket-place  and  the  temple,  and  wherever 
men's  active  lives  led  them.  He  did  not  spend 
his  days  trying  to  achieve  impossibilities;  but 
when  the  question  came  between  a  kingdom  of 
the  world,  which  seemed  within  his  grasp,  and  a 
kingdom  of  heaven,  w^hicli  involved  humiliation 
and  death,  he  failed  not  to  make  choice  of  the 
latter.  He  did  not  set  himself  apart  from  pub- 
licans and  sinners,  as  did  the  Pharisees  of  his  own 
day,  or  the  Puritans  of  a  more  modern  time;  but 
he  kept  his  standards  higher  than  those  of  any 
Pharisee,  and  his  life  purer  than  that  of  any 
Puritan.  By  his  life  and  by  his  death  he  gave 
what  the  world  had  not  yet  seen — a  religion  which 
had  its  highest  ideal,  not  in  lifting  a  man  up 
apart  from  his  fellows,  but  in  bringing  the  Spirit 
of  God  into  the  midst  of  the  daily  life  of  men. 

I  have  chosen  this  theme  for  the  opening  Sun- 
day of  the  term  because  every  man  who  comes  to 


RESPONSIBILITY  TO  OTHERS  137 

college  finds  himself  face  to  face  with  this  same 
})roblem  of  combining  high  individual  standards 
with  wide  sympathy  and  influence  among  his  fel- 
lows. Indeed,  I  think  that  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant phases  of  education  which  a  good  college 
gives  is  its  effect  in  teaching  a  man  that  he  can 
neither  live  for  himself  without  working  for  the 
community,  nor  do  his  duty  to  the  community 
without  living  an  independent  life  of  his  own. 

There  are  some  men  who,  during  the  last  years 
of  their  education,  stay  at  home  and  study  by 
themselves.  There  are  others  who  go  into  for- 
eign countries,  where  they  are  more  or  less  iso- 
lated in  the  midst  of  the  foreign  surroundings 
about  them.  And  there  are  others  still  who, 
coming  to  American  colleges,  shut  themselves  up 
within  themselves,  living  with  their  books  in  the 
pursuit  of  literature  or  science  or  professional 
theory,  without  forming  any  essential  part  of  the 
community  to  which  they  belong.  These  men  find 
it  relatively  easy  to  keep  their  own  intellectual 
standards  unsullied  by  contact  with  their  fellow 
men ;  for  they  really  have  no  such  contact.  The 
man  who  stays  at  home  is  in  the  very  nature  of 
things    protected   from   it.      The   man   who  goes 


13cS  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

abroad  or  \]\c  man  who  lives  tlio  life  of  a  hermit 
erects  an  nrtiiieial  barrier  whicli  protects  him. 
For  certain  narrow  pur^wses  these  barriers  and 
protections  may  prove  useful.  They  may  enable 
the  student  to  get  greater  intellectual  concentra- 
tion and  greater  immunity  from  certain  specific 
temptations  than  he  could  possibly  have  without 
them.  But  to  the  development  of  a  well-rounded 
character  for  a  man  who  is  going  to  serve  his 
country  and  do  his  share  in  the  world's  work,  they 
form  a  hindrance  rather  than  a  help.  This  arti- 
ficially protected  virtue  is  a  dangerous  thing. 
The  man  who  has  been  specially  shielded  from 
temptations  in  his  educational  life  is  likely  to 
succumb  to  them  when  he  meets  them  in  after 
years.  The  man  who  has  been  taught  to  think 
everything  of  his  work  and  nothing  of  the  men 
about  him  is  likely  to  over-estimate  the  im- 
portance of  his  own  ideas,  and  under-estimate 
the  importance  of  rendering  them  serviceable  to 
others.  Better  far  that  the  student  should  waste 
some  effort  and  make  some  mistakes  in  the  years 
when  he  has  a  superabundance  of  energy  and 
when  errors  are  not  irreparable  than  that  he 
should  content  himself  with  the  education  which 


RESPONSIBILITY  TO  OTHERS  139 

fits  a  man  for  subjection  rather  than  for  freedom, 
for  the  cloister  rather  than  the  world. 

The  whole  spirit  of  this  place  demands  that 
you  live  for  others — that  you  form  part  of  a 
community  which  counts  individual  work  for 
relatively  little  unless  the  whole  college  benefits 
thereby,  and  which  discourages  to  an  extreme  de- 
gree those  habits  which  mark  the  recluse  or  the 
self-centred  man.  Indeed,  I  suspect  that  we  go 
too  far  in  this  direction.  A  very  keen  observer, 
who  has  seen  much  of  the  conditions  of  life  at  dif- 
ferent colleges,  says :  "  Harvard  encourages  a  man 
to  live  his  own  life,  but  it  sometimes  leads  him  to 
ignore  the  fact  that  he  is  part  of  a  community,  with 
all  the  duties  which  community  life  brings  and  the 
inspiration  which  it  gives.  Yale  encourages  a  man 
to  feel  himself  in  the  fullest  sense  a  member  of  a 
community,  but  it  sometimes  fails  to  give  him  the 
stimulus  to  work  out  his  individual  life  for  him- 
self and  make  standards  which  he  holds  as  his 
own,  independent  of  what  others  may  do."  I  sus- 
pect that  there  is  truth  in  this  comparison.  Each 
place  represents  a  type  of  character  and  ideal — ■ 
the  Harvard  ideal  of  individual  development  on 
the  one  hand,  the  Yale  ideal  of  public  service  on 


IK)  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

the  other.  Each  tlicory  is  good  in  itself;  eiieh, 
Avhen  earried  to  an  extreme,  is  liable  to  those  de- 
fects which  arc  closely  connected  with  its  merits. 
The  man  who  thinks  mnch  of  his  responsibility 
to  himself  may  think  too  little  of  his  responsibil- 
ity to  others;  the  man  who  thinks  much  of  his 
responsibility  to  others  may  think  too  little  of  his 
responsibility  to  himself. 

If  there  be  this  inherent  danger  in  our  Yale 
atmosphere,  there  is  all  the  more  reason  why  we 
should  put  ourselves  on  guard  against  it.  The  more 
we  are  impelled  to  sink  our  life  in  that  of  others, 
the  more  earnestly  we  should  strive  not  to  lose  our 
moral  standards  or  our  intellectual  independence. 
This  is  a  serious  task.  If  we  live  day  by  day 
among  friends  who  prefer  preeminence  in  amuse- 
ment to  preeminence  in  vigorous  work,  it  is  not 
easy  for  us  to  remember  that  the  latter  is  the  thing 
which  is  going  to  count  in  the  long  run.  If  we  meet 
hour  after  hour  those  who  tolerate  some  deviation 
from  the  best  principles  of  decorum,  or  honor,  or 
truthfulness,  it  is  hard  for  us  to  impose  upon  our- 
selves the  standard  of  conduct  which  really  marks 
the  gentleman.  Democratic  communities  have  al- 
ways been  in  danger  of  taking  the  views  of  the 


RESPONSIBILITY  TO  OTHERS  141 

majority  as  a  sufficiently  good  test  of  what  was 
right,  Yale  is  an  intensely  democratic  commu- 
nity, and  therefore  peculiarly  liable  to  this  mis- 
take. I  do  not  mean  that  these  deviations  from 
morality  in  our  community  are  gross,  or  these  per- 
versions of  intellectual  standards  extreme.  I 
believe,  on  the  contrary,  that  the  general  system  of 
morals  is  good,  the  general  tone  of  work  vigorous, 
the  general  scale  of  values  reasonably  near  the 
truth.  But  the  conditions  are  not  so  good  as 
to  relieve  us  from  the  responsibility  of  making 
them  a  great  deal  better.  If  we  would  educate 
ourselves  for  the  positions  of  leadership  in  the 
life  that  is  before  us,  we  must  learn  to  take  the 
lead  here — not  simply  to  accept  public  opinion, 
but  to  do  our  part  in  moulding  public  opinion. 
The  stronger  a  man  is  the  more  heavily  does 
this  responsibility  lie  upon  his  shoulders.  Every- 
thing that  he  does  is  imitated  by  a  hundred  others. 
The  standard  which  he  thus  sets  is  carried  down 
through  college  generations  which  are  to  come. 
Let  us  work  unreservedly  to  make  good  use  of 
these  opportunities.  It  was  Christ's  prayer  that 
his  followers  should  not  be  taken  out  of  the  world, 
but  should  be  kept  from  evil.     Let  us  all,  what- 


142  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

ever  our  Held  of  activity  and  whatever  our  form 
of  belief,  unite  in  this  common  end  of  living  fully 
the  life  of  those  about  us,  while  maintaining  for 
ourselves  the  moral  standards  which  we  believe 
to  be  right.  Whatever  we  do,  let  us  impose  upon 
ourselves  and  encourage  in  others  the  spirit  of 
responsibility,  of  self-restraint,  of  truthfulness, 
and  of  courtesy.  If  we  are  working  with  our 
books,  we  shall  then  do  work  which  will  better  pre- 
pare us  for  a  life  of  service  to  others.  If  we  are 
engaged  in  social  activities,  we  shall  be  helping 
society  to  be  ordered  in  a  spirit  of  manly  courtesy 
and  appreciation.  If  we  are  preparing  for  our 
professions,  we  shall  contribute  to  the  elevation 
of  professional  standards.  And  if  we  are  striving 
to  give  shape  to  our  religious  character  and  con- 
victions, we  shall  develop  a  religion  which,  what- 
ever its  details  of  creed  or  observance,  will  yet  be 
in  the  largest  sense  a  following  of  Christ  and  a 
service  of  God. 


MORAL    LESSONS    OF    COLLEGE    LIFE 

"Take  heed  unto  thyself,  and  unto  the  doctrine;  continue 
in  them:  for  in  doing  this  thou  shalt  both  save  thyself,  and 
them  that  hear  thee." 

We  are  often  told  that  college  is  a  place  where 
men  are  subject  to  peculiar  temptations.  In  one 
sense,  I  suppose  this  is  true ;  in  another  and  more 
important  sense,  I  am  confident  that  it  is  untrue. 
The  differences  between  the  moral  life  of  the  col- 
lege and  the  moral  life  of  the  world  are  super- 
ficial ;  the  resemblance  and  connection  between  the 
two  are  fundamental.  The  special  temptations  of 
college  life  are  substantially  the  same  kinds  of 
temptation  that  we  shall  have  to  face  afterward; 
the  special  opportunities  of  college  life  are  oppor- 
tunities for  seeing  what  the  world  is  really  going 
to  want  and  making  ourselves  fitted  to  meet  that 
want. 

As  I  look  over  the  record  of  the  different 
classes  when  they  come  back  to  their  successive  re- 
unions, I  am  impressed  with  the  fact  that  by  far 
the  greater  part  of  their  members  have  fulfilled 
143 


Mt  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

till'  jtroiiiisc  of  their  collouc  (l:i_vs,  for  evil  or  for 
H'ood.  T\[v  mail  who  in  his  culli'iie  life  was  bril- 
liant but  weak  still  suffers  from  the  fatal  ef- 
fects of  his  weakness  in  nndermining  the  results 
of  bis  brilliancy.  The  man  who  served  liim- 
self  still  serves  himself.  The  man  who  served 
others  continues  to  serve  others.  The  man  who 
had  standards  of  his  own,  to  wbich  he  held 
througli  evil  report  and  good  report,  still 
continues  to  maintain  those  standards  amid  the 
vicissitudes  of  after  life.  As  was  the  foundation, 
so  is  tbe  building.  As  was  the  judgment  of  class- 
mates concerning  a  man's  promise,  so  is  the  verdict 
of  the  world  concerning  his  performance. 

Of  course  there  are  some  exceptions  to  this 
rule.  There  are  men  who  were  young  in  college, 
physically  or  mentally,  who  after  graduation  have 
grown  into  a  fuller  measure  of  power  and  respon- 
sibility. And  there  are  men  who  were  old  in 
college,  physically  or  mentally,  who  in  their  under- 
gi'aduate  days  seemed  stronger  than  their  younger 
associates  but  have  not  kept  pace  with  them  in 
their  subsequent  growth.  But  these  exceptions 
are  not  numerous.  As  a  general  rule  a  man's  col- 
lege life  foreshadows  with  ominous  sureness  the 


LESSONS  OF  COLLEGE  LIFE  145 

eliaracter  that  is  in  store  for  liim  hereafter;  and 
the  temptations  that  are  commonly  regarded  as 
peculiar  to  his  college  days  are  essentially  the 
same  as  those  which  he  meets  all  through  his  active 
work  in  any  free  community. 

One  of  these  temptations  is  that  of  idleness. 
Some  men  come  to  college  without  any  intention 
of  hard  or  serious  work.  Others,  whose  intentions 
are  good  enough  at  the  beginning,  allow  themselves 
to  be  distracted  by  the  enjoyments  and  dissipa- 
tions of  the  place,  until  at  the  end  of  a  somewhat 
purposeless  year  they  find  nothing  definite  to  show 
in  the  way  of  progress.  They  excuse  themselves 
by  saying  that  college  life  gives  a  chance  for  en- 
joyment which  they  may  never  have  again,  and 
that  when  they  go  out  into  the  real  business  of 
after  life  they  will  settle  down  to  work.  And 
sometimes  it  happens  that  such  men  really  do 
settle  down — that  the  sobering  influence  of  the 
necessity  of  making  a  living  causes  them,  when 
they  enter  the  shop  or  ofiice  or  professional  school, 
to  work  with  a  steadiness  and  continuity  of  which 
their  college  life  gave  no  promise.  In  that  case 
they  may  have  lost  nothing  except  four  good  years 
of  activity.     But  it  far  more  frequently  happens 


i46  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

that  the  man  who  was  an  idler  or  a  trillcr  in 
college  continnes  to  be  an  uWvr  and  a  tritler  after- 
ward. The  man  who  lias  yielded  to  the  tempta- 
tions of  laziness  at  twenty  will  continne  to  find 
those  temptations  strong  at  thirty.  The  same  lack 
of  fixity  of  purpose  which  was  his  bane  in  college 
will  continne  to  be  his  besetting  sin  in  after  life. 
Far  from  being  the  only  place  where  men  are 
exposed  to  this  danger,  I  believe  that  college  is  a 
place  where  men  have  special  means  of  guarding 
themselves  against  it.  To  almost  every  man  col- 
lege offers  the  opportunity  of  learning  to  work 
regularly  at  a  number  of  routine  duties  whether 
he  likes  them  or  not,  and  of  concentrating  his 
special  efforts  on  some  variety  of  hard  w^ork — 
scholastic,  literary,  athletic,  or  social — where  it 
will  be  his  own  fault  if  he  has  not  sufficient  in- 
terest in  himself  and  companionship  among  his 
fellows  to  hold  him  up  to  a  really  high  standard 
of  achievement.  Of  course  there  are  some  men 
who  are  so  constituted  that  they  cannot  meet  the 
round  of  routine  duties  without  breaking  down, 
and  some  to  whom  no  one  of  the  many  activities 
of  college  life  appeals  strongly  enough  to  serve  as 
a  stimulus.     But  these  men  are  the  exceptions. 


LESSONS  OF  COLLEGE  LIFE  147 

The  average  college  man  has  health  enough,  and 
brains  enough,  and  interest  enough,  to  make  life 
a  training  in  the  regidar  doing  of  many  things 
that  he  cares  little  about  and  in  the  intensely  ac- 
tive doing  of  some  things  that  he  cares  much  about. 
He  who  has  learned  this  lesson  has  laid  founda- 
tions on  which  he  can  build  up  a  strong  life  instead 
of  a  weak  one. 

A  second  among  the  so-called  peculiar  tempta- 
tions of  college  life  is  that  of  irresponsibility. 
Where  a  number  of  men  live  together  and  know 
each  other  well,  the  temptation  is  strong  upon 
every  man  to  do  as  the  crowd  does — to  pursue  ear- 
nestly whatever  the  others  pursue  and  to  neglect 
whatever  the  others  neglect.  There  is  no  need  of 
going  into  particulars.  I  am  sure  we  can  all  of 
us  remember  countenancing  acts  of  indignity  or 
disorder  or  inconsiderate  disregard  of  the  rights 
of  others  which  we  should  have  been  ashamed  even 
to  think  of  doing  alone,  but  whereof  we  were  quite 
ready  to  let  the  crowd  take  the  responsibility. 
That  we  shall  continue  to  do  precisely  the  same 
things  in  after  life  is  very  improbable.  A  change 
of  standpoint  will  make  us  see  the  real  character 
of  certain  acts  of  disorder  or  cruelty  or  meanness 


148  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

to  wliic'li  in  the  cxcitoiiK'nt  of  college  life  we  were 
more  or  less  blind.  Vmt  we  nmst  not  delude  our- 
selves with  the  supposition  that  this  change  of 
standpoint  will  mean  a  change  of  character.  We 
may  stop  doing  the  same  things ;  we  are  likely  to 
go  on  to  do  other  things  of  the  same  kind.  The 
man  whose  tale-bearing  has  made  mischief  in 
college  will  make  quarrels  in  after  life.  The  man 
who  has  been  content  to  go  with  the  crowd  in 
society  politics,  against  his  better  judgiiient,  will 
go  with  the  crowd  in  party  politics  until  he  be- 
comes the  willing  tool  of  the  most  corrupt  ma- 
chine. The  man  who  thoughtlessly  breaks  the 
rules  of  decency  and  public  order  to-day  runs  a 
perilous  risk  of  getting  into  the  habit  of  breaking 
the  ten  commandments  a  few  years  hence.  If  your 
morality  is  no  better  than  that  of  the  men  about 
you,  be  sure  that  your  after  life  will  have  no  more 
safeguards  than  your  college  life. 

Far  from  being  subject  to  special  dangers,  you 
are  to-day  in  possession  of  special  advantages. 
The  community  in  which  you  live  is  small  enough 
and  homogeneous  enough  for  you  to  make  your 
individuality  felt,  if  you  care  to  take  the  trouble 
to  do  it ;  not  necessarily  by  loud-voiced  protest,  in 


LESSONS  OF  COLLEGE  LIFE  149 

season  and  out  of  season,  against  practices  which 
joiir  conscience  condemns ;  but  chiefly  by  living 
a  careful  life  yourself  and  reenforcing  the  lessons 
of  that  life  by  a  word  here  and  there,  whether  in 
public  or  in  private,  spoken  where  there  is  a  chance 
of  its  amounting  to  something.  I  have  no  respect 
for  any  one  who  says  that  he  has  to  do  as  the 
crowd  does ;  and  least  of  all  do  I  respect  such  a 
man  when  he  is  in  a  college  that  gives  him  so  large 
a  chance  to  make  the  crowd  do  as  he  does.  By 
the  habit  of  quiet  action  and  responsibility  for  his 
OAvn  conduct,  a  man  in  college  can  achieve  inde- 
pendence of  character  and  lay  the  foundation  of 
moral  leadership. 

There  is  one  particular  form  of  irresponsibility 
to  which  our  college  community  is  specially  liable 
— for  which  the  student  frequently  excuses  him- 
self, and  is  sometimes  excused  by  friends  who 
should  know  better.  I  refer  to  a  certain  laxity 
in  our  standards  of  honor.  There  is  no  small  sec- 
tion of  our  college  community  which  will  condone 
unfair  work  in  intercollegiate  contests  when  the 
umpire  is  not  looking,  or  unfair  means  of  passing 
examinations  by  which  the  vigilance  of  the  au- 
thorities can  be  eluded.     There  are  all  kinds  of 


150  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

current  excuses  for  this.  It  is  said  tliat  the  prac- 
tice is  so  common  that  the  individual  is  hardly  to 
blame  for  following  it.  If  a  man  is  detected  and 
disgraced,  he  complains  of  the  unfairness  when 
he  is  singled  out  for  penalty  while  half  a  dozen 
others  who  have  done  the  same  thing  have  passed 
without  detection.  But  the  man  who  takes  this 
low  view  of  his  obligations  is  preparing  himself 
for  an  equally  low  view  of  his  obligations  in  after 
life.  The  man  who  finds  in  the  laxity  of  his 
fellows  an  excuse  for  cheating  at  football  will  find 
many  years  hence  a  similar  excuse  for  cheating 
in  business.  The  man  w^ho  uses  unfair  methods 
for  getting  an  examination  mark  which  he  did  not 
earn,  because  other  people  are  using  similar  meth- 
ods, will  find  exactly  the  same  unfairness  in  the 
ways  by  which  his  competitors  earn  money  in 
later  life ;  and  if  he  is  content  to  accept  their 
standards  he  will  go  to  lengths  which  will  land 
him  in  jail  if  he  is  found  out.  Do  not  be  deceived 
for  one  moment.  The  possibility  of  undetected 
fraud,  the  applause  given  to  the  expert  in  cheat- 
ing, the  frequent  successes  and  infrequent  dis- 
coveries, are  not  in  any  wise  peculiar  to  college 
life.     The  man  who  makes  anv  excuse  for  deceit 


LESSONS  OF  COLLEGE  LIFE  151 

pass  current  with  his  conscience  here  is  depriving 
himself  of  all  protection  against  temptation  after- 
ward. The  only  one  who  has  the  right  to  call 
himself  a  gentleman  and  a  Christian  is  the  man 
who,  in  spite  of  all  difficulties  and  temptations, 
builds  up  a  standard  of  honor  which  he  holds  for 
himself,  whether  others  hold  it  or  not. 

Do  you  say  that  this  is  hard  doctrine  ?  It 
is,  at  any  rate,  true  doctrine,  and  Christian  doc- 
trine. "  Whosoever  will  come  after  me,  let  him 
deny  himself,  and  take  up  his  cross,  and  follow 
me."  In  relieving  man  from  the  burdens  which 
the  law  placed  upon  him,  the  gospel  demanded 
that  he  should  impose  upon  himself  wider  duties 
and  obligations  toward  his  fellow  men,  and  take 
the  responsibility  of  seeing  for  himself  that  he 
fulfilled  those  duties.  Even  if  we  sometimes  fail 
to  keep  up  to  this  high  standard,  we  must  never 
lower  our  purposes.  Even  if  we  make  mistakes 
and  yield  to  temptations,  and  fall  di scour agingly 
short  of  our  ideals,  we  must  never  let  those  ideals 
go  nor  relax  our  efforts  to  keep  up  to  them.  The 
whole  Christian  doctrine  of  forgiveness  demands 
as  the  first  condition  of  pardon  that  a  man  should 
recognize  the  difference  between  the  wrong  thing 


152  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

(liat  lio  lias  (lone  mid  I  lie  i-i^lil  tliin<;  wliicli  lie 
purposes  to  do.  The  law  was  content  to  set  the 
standard  so  low  that  cvcryhody  might  be  expected 
to  keep  np  to  it  The  gospel  sets  the  standard 
infinitely  higher — so  high  that  no  ontside  author- 
ity can  enforce  compliance  to  its  demands,  and  so 
high  that  we  ourselves  often  make  costly  errors 
in  our  efforts  to  reach  it.  But  if  we  will  use  our 
religion  aright,  we  can  make  our  very  failures 
serve  as  a  lesson  for  the  future  and  as  a  means  of 
progress  in  moral  understanding. 

I  am  not  encouraging  you  to  excuse  or  condone 
these  failures.  The  whole  habit  of  making  ex- 
cuses is  the  relic  of  a  time  of  moral  slavery,  when 
the  first  object  of  any  man  wdio  had  done  wrong 
was  to  try  to  prove  to  somebody  else  that  he  had 
not  done  wrong.  If  a  man  is  his  own  master,  the 
thing  for  him  to  do  is  to  find  out  exactly  what  he 
has  done,  in  order  to  avoid  making  the  same  mis- 
take again.  In  the  curiously  candid  account  of 
his  own  military  achievements  which  Frederick 
the  Great  has  left  us  he  says,  in  substance,  sum- 
ming up  one  of  his  earlier  campaigns :  "  The  king 
during  these  weeks  committed  almost  every  fault 
to  which  a  general  is  liable.     The  conduct  of  his 


LESSONS  OF  COLLEGE  LIFE  153 

adversary  shines  out  by  contrast,  and  deserves  the 
careful  attention  of  all  students  of  military  art. 
The  king  himself  has  many  times  told  me  " — so 
runs  the  quaintly  impersonal  language  of  the  nar- 
rative— "  that  if  ever  during  his  later  campaigns 
it  has  fallen  to  his  lot  to  achieve  any  considerable 
success,  it  was  largely  due  to  the  seriousness  with 
which  he  pondered  the  lessons  derived  from  a 
comparison  of  his  own  conduct  and  that  of  his  ad- 
versary in  this  campaign."  It  was  because  Fred- 
erick was  able  to  learn  lessons  of  this  kind  that  he, 
as  life  went  on,  became  a  greater  and  greater  gen- 
eral, and  established  his  kingdom  as  the  leading 
power  in  Europe.  It  was  because  of  the  failure 
to  do  this  that  Napoleon,  more  richly  endowed  by 
nature  with  military  genius,  nevertheless  ended 
his  career  in  misfortune  and  ignominy. 

In  every  department  of  life  this  honest  com- 
parison of  what  we  have  actually  done  with  what 
we  might  have  done  is  the  condition  of  progress. 
It  is  the  means  of  raising  our  performance  to  the 
level  of  our  ideals,  instead  of  lowering  our  ideals' 
to  the  level  of  our  performance.  "  If  we  say  that 
we  have  no  sin,  we  deceive  ourselves,  and  the  truth 
is  not  in  us.     If  we  confess  our  sins,  he  is  faithful 


154  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

and  just  to  forgive  us  our  sins,  and  to  cleanse  us 
from  all  unrighteousness."  If  n  man  would  go 
forward  instead  of  backward,  would  do  better  to- 
morrow than  he  did  yesterday,  ho  must  frankly 
recognize  his  o'uti  weak  or  misguided  conduct  for 
what  it  really  is,  and  see  how  uuich  it  falls  short 
of  the  standard  set  by  the  heroes  and  saints  and 
martyrs  and  by  Christ  himself.  Face  the  facts 
of  your  life  as  it  has  been,  open  your  mind  by 
the  reading  of  poetry  and  history  and  the  Holy 
Scripture  to  the  best  possibilities  of  life  as  it 
ought  to  be,  and  you  will  have  it  in  your  power 
to  "  rise  on  stepping  stones  of  your  dead  selves 
to  higher  things."  The  man  who  is  thus  truth- 
ful with  himself  may  find  his  whole  career,  in 
college  and  in  the  world  afterward,  a  hard  one. 
He  may  find  his  failures  discouraging,  the  differ- 
ence between  what  he  means  to  do  and  what  he 
does  hopelessly  wide.  But  let  him  be  assured  that 
each  year  and  each  month  and  each  week  wit- 
nesses a  growth  in  power  far  beyond  what  he  him- 
self suspects ;  and  that  when  the  test  comes  by 
which  his  work  is  to  be  judged,  whether  in  this 
life  or  in  the  life  hereafter,  he  shall  stand  forth 
among  the  chosen  of  God. 


FIXITY    OF    PURPOSE 

"If  any  of  you  lack  wisdom,  let  him  ask  of  God,  that 
giveth  to  all  men  liberally,  and  upbraideth  not;  and  it  shall 
be  given  him. 

"But  let  him  ask  in  faith,  nothing  wavering.  For  he  that 
wavereth  is  like  a  wave  of  the  sea  driven  with  the  wind  and 
tossed. 

"  For  let  not  that  man  think  that  he  shall  receive  any 
thing  of  the  Lord. 

"A  double  minded  man  is  unstable  in  all  his  ways." 

I  AM  trying  to  show  what  it  means  to  have  a 
purpose  in  life — a  real  purpose,  which  lifts  a  man 
outside  of  himself  and  gives  him  the  power  to  do 
his  best. 

In  a  general  way,  every  one  of  us  has  some  such 
honorable  purpose;  an  ambition  to  do  something 
worth  while,  to  render  service  to  his  fellow  men, 
to  leave  the  world  better  for  his  having  lived  in 
it.  If  there  is  any  man  here  who  has  no  such 
ambition  at  all,  he  has  come  to  the  wrong  place. 
This  institution  was  founded  to  train  men  not  for 
private  gain  but  for  public  service;  and  through 
two  full  centuries  of  its  history  this  characteristic 
has  remained  unaltered.  But  it  is  not  enough  to 
155 


l')(i  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

have  this  aiiihition  vague  and  imdcfined.  It  iiiii.st 
hr  made  definite  and  active.  It  is  not  enough  to 
aspire  to  do  good  in  our  better  moments.  The 
asj)iration  must  be  so  fixed  and  so  intelligent  as 
to  help  us  in  times  of  ditficulty  and  temptation. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  temptation  which  per- 
petually operate  to  prevent  our  purposes  from 
being  realized:  the  temptations  of  idle  pleasure 
and  the  temptations  of  selfishness.  Idle  pleasures 
may  cause  a  man  to  lose  sight  of  his  purpose  until 
it  is  dissipated  and  brought  to  nothing.  Selfish- 
ness may  so  pervert  that  purpose  as  to  make  it 
lead  a  man  w-rong  instead  of  right.  To  one  or  the 
other  of  these  dangers  all  of  us  are  subject.  The 
rich  man,  who  can  command  the  opportunity  for 
}:)leasure,  is  more  exposed  to  the  temptations  of 
idleness.  The  poor  man,  who  has  his  way  to  make 
in  the  world,  is  more  exposed  to  the  temptations 
of  selfishness.  But  every  one  of  us,  rich  or  poor, 
has  need  to  ask  the  Lord  for  wisdom  if  he  w^ould 
keep  true  to  the  standard  which  in  his  better  mo- 
ments he  recognizes  as  the  right  one. 

In  a  place  like  this  the  temptations  of  pleasure 
are  more  constantly  present  than  the  temptations 
of  selfishness.     Most  of  us  have  come  here  Avitli 


FIXITY  OF  PURPOSE  157 

the  desire  and  intent  to  have  much  present  enjoy- 
ment out  of  college  life  as  students,  and  to  pre- 
pare ourselves  for  future  enjoyment  as  gi'aduates. 
This  desire  is  not  inconsistent  with  the  highest 
purpose  of  public  service.  A  Puritan  of  the  old 
school  would  have  said  that  it  was;  but  we  have 
learned  better.  We  have  learned  that  unswerving 
devotion  to  duty  is  consistent  with  large  and  varied 
enjoyment  of  the  pleasures  of  life.  Christ  him- 
self showed  us  that  unselfishness  does  not  involve 
asceticism.  The  fulfilment  of  a  high  mission  to 
the  world  does  not  stand  in  the  way  of  full  enjoy- 
ment of  the  pleasures  and  friendships  which  life 
brings. 

This  possibility  of  combining  pleasure  with  ser- 
vice, enjoyment  with  devotion,  does  not,  however, 
make  life's  problems  easier.  It  makes  them 
harder.  The  Hindoo  who  shunned  temptation  by 
renouncing  society  and  all  its  enjoyments  had  a 
simpler  task  before  him  than  the  Christian  who, 
doing  his  work  among  his  fellow  men,  must  dis- 
tinguish between  the  right  enjoyments  which  he 
can  share  and  the  wrong  ones  whicli  he  must  avoid. 

For  this  distinction  is  a  subtle  one.  We  cannot 
make  a  set  of  laws  telling  what  is  right  for  every- 


loS  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

body  or  what  is  \vroiig-  for  everybody.  Things  are 
right  or  wrong  for  a  man  according  as  they  affect 
his  power  of  doing  God's  work.  'J'hat  which  lielps 
one  man  may  hinder  another.  That  which  is  nec- 
essary for  one  man  may  be  fatal  to  another.  But 
this  thing  at  least  stands  out  clear:  the  men  who 
leave  their  mark  upon  the  world  are  the  men  who, 
Avlien  it  comes  to  a  real  conflict  between  purpose 
and  pleasure,  care  more  for  the  former  than  for  the 
latter.  Vir  tenax  propositi — a  man  wlio  holds  to 
the  course  which  he  sets  before  him — that  was  the 
Roman  idea  of  a  true  man,  and  by  virtue  of  that 
idea  the  Romans  conquered  the  world.  The  Greek 
might  do  more  kinds  of  things,  acquire  skill  in 
more  kinds  of  arts,  develop  more  kinds  of  knowl- 
edge; but  in  tlie  long  run  the  varied  talents  and 
arts  and  knowledge  of  the  Greek  counted  for  less 
than  the  fixity  of  purpose  of  the  Roman.  If  we 
have  something  in  our  hearts  that  we  really  care 
for,  year  in  and  year  out,  all  kinds  of  experience 
of  life  through  which  we  may  pass  become  as 
means  to  that  end.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  have 
no  such  dominant  aim,  we  are  at  the  mercy 
of  our  appetites  and  temptations.  Pleasures  which 
to   the   man   of   strong   purpose    are   a   necessary 


J 


FIXITY  OF  PURPOSE  159 

and  useful  recreation — a  means  of  creating  anew 
the  power  to  do  good  work — become  to  the  man  of 
weak  purpose,  first  a  distraction,  which  calls  away 
his  attention  from  the  need  of  doing  anything 
more  permanent,  and  then  a  dissipation,  which 
scatters  to  the  winds  the  initial  power  he  had 
until  he  finds  that  he  no  longer  possesses  it.  A 
man  with  a  purpose  is  a  man;  a  man  without  a 
purpose  is  an  animal,  and  a  very  poor  kind  of 
animal  at  that.  For,  though  he  has  more  varied 
capacities  for  enjoyment  and  activity  than  any 
other  animal,  he  lacks  the  animal's  inherited  in- 
stinct, which  makes  it  seek  enjoyment  in  the  things 
which  it  needs  and  shun  the  things  that  would  do 
harm.  The  varied  sensibilities  and  powers  which, 
properly  directed,  make  man  little  lower  than  the 
angels,  in  the  absence  of  such  direction  expose 
him  to  evil  and  destruction.  Only  by  the  guid- 
ance of  fixed  purpose  can  he  live  a  man's  life  and 
do  a  man's  work. 

But  while  the  possession  of  such  a  purpose  will 
stamp  him  as  a  man,  something  more  is  needed  to 
make  him  a  good  man.  A  selfish  purpose  like 
ambition  may  protect  a  man  from  the  tempta- 
tions of  idle  pleasure  just  as  effectively  as  an  un- 


1C)0  TALIvS  TO  STUDENTS 

selfish  purpose  like  devotion  to  public  service; 
but  it  may  at  the  same  time  result  in  a  man's  so 
misusing  his  life  that  from  the  standpoint  of  God 
and  his  fellow  men  it  is  worse  than  wasted.  IIow 
can  we  guard  against  this  ?  How  can  we  have  the 
wisdom  to  see  which  are  right  purposes  and  which 
are  wrong  ones  ?  How  can  we  make  our  philos- 
ophy of  life  a  Christian  instead  of  a  pagan  one  ? 

If  a  man's  purposes  and  ideals  are  such  that  he 
is  seeking  to  attain  them  for  himself  at  the  ex- 
pense of  his  fellow  men,  they  are  pagan  ideals, 
and  the  man  who  pursues  them  is  likely  to  grow 
bad  as  he  grows  older.  If  his  ideals  are  such  that 
each  step  toward  their  realization  means  the  ad- 
vancement of  those  about  him,  his  purposes  are 
Christian;  and  amid  all  the  difficulties  and  dis- 
couragements attending  their  realization  he  is  sure 
to  grow  good  as  he  grows  older.  Are  our  ideals 
able  to  meet  this  test  ?  Let  us  look  at  its  appli- 
cation in  various  fields. 

What  is  the  pagan  ideal  of  sport?  To  win 
whether  you  play  fairly  or  not.  What  is  the 
Christian  ideal  ?  To  play  the  game  fairly  for  all 
that  it  is  worth,  and  win  on  those  terms  or  not  at 
all.      If   we  hold   the   former   ideal   every  game 


FIXITY  OF  PURPOSE  161 

which  we  play  is  a  training  for  fraudulent  busi- 
ness, bad  politics,  and  an  unchristian  civilization. 
If  we  play  with  the  latter  purpose  in  view,  every 
game  ista  training  for  that  public  service  in  church 
and  state  for  which  Yale  College  was  founded. 

What  is  the  ideal  in  intellectual  work  ?  Is  it  to 
achieve  a  certain  degree  of  distinction  here  and 
hereafter,  without  regard  to  the  means  by  which 
that  distinction  has  been  obtained  ?  Or  is  it  to 
prepare  for  that  true  knowledge  of  nature  and  man 
which  can  be  used  for  efficient  service  ?  In  the 
former  case  our  learning  is  pagan;  in  the  latter 
it  is  Christian.  In  the  former  case  our  collegiate 
training  is  morally  unsound ;  in  the  latter  case  it 
is  the  most  valuable  education  which  a  man  can 
possibly  have.  The  old  question  repeats  itself  in 
a  thousand  different  ways:  Are  we  trying  to  get 
as  much  out  of  life  as  we  can,  or  are  we  trying  to 
put  as  much  into  life  as  we  can?  It  is  the  man 
who  is  dominated  by  the  purpose  to  put  tilings 
into  life  who  takes  the  lead  in  the  service  of  God. 

But  how  can  we  get  this  unselfish  purpose  ?  or 
rather,  how  can  we  maintain  and  strengthen  the 
unselfish  purpose  with  which  we  start  ? 

First,  by  seeing  things  about  us  as  they  really 


162  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

are.  Amid  the  activities  of  college  life  we  are 
tempted  to  look  at  our  actions  through  a  false  me- 
dium aud  call  tlieui  by  wrong  names.  We  say  that 
a  man  is  having  a  good  time  at  college,  when  he  is 
doing  things  which  he  would  be  ashamed  to  do  at 
home  because  he  would  have  to  call  them  by  their 
right  names.  We  say  that  he  is  simply  comply- 
ing with  college  customs  in  study  or  in  sport,  when 
he  does  things  which  would  be  known  elsewhere  by 
tlie  plain  title  of  cheating.  The  man  who  really 
keeps  his  eyes  open  to  see  things  in  their  true  light 
is  safe  from  half  the  perils  which  would  other- 
wise beset  him. 

Second,  by  getting  a  true  understanding  of  the 
real  value  of  different  parts  of  life,  as  distin- 
guished from  the  temporary  or  factitious  value 
that  the  world  places  upon  them.  For  this  under- 
standing of  values  a  college  course  offers  special 
advantages.  A  man  who  is  in  the  midst  of  active 
business  almost  necessarily  lays  undue  stress  upon 
the  possession  of  money.  A  man  who  is  active 
in  politics  lays  undue  stress  upon  getting  office. 
A  man  who  is  successful  in  any  profession  is 
tempted  to  make  the  standards  of  that  profession 
liis  highest  guide.     At  college,  however,  we  have 


FIXITY  OF  PURPOSE  163 

the  opportunity  for  seeing  things  in  a  somewhat 
clearer  liglit.  Our  study  of  science  should  teach 
us  the  value  of  truth  independent  of  the  pecuniary 
or  professional  use  that  is  to  be  made  of  it.  Our 
study  of  history  should  teach  us  that  it  is  char- 
acter rather  than  money  or  office  which  moves  the 
world.  Our  study  of  literature  should  inspire  us 
with  ideals  of  devotion  and  service  and  give  us 
standards  which  look  beyond  the  visible  results  of 
the  day's  work. 

Third,  by  finding  among  the  manifold  interests 
of  college  life  something  for  which  a  man  cares 
so  much  that  he  will  voluntarily  encounter  the 
difficulties  and  hardships  which  are  necessary'  for 
its  attainment.  The  life  of  our  American  col- 
leges to-day  is  so  manifold  and  complex  that  any 
man  can  find  some  such  thing — scholastic  or  ath- 
letic, literary  or  social — which  appeals  to  his  spe- 
cial taste  and  aptitude.  The  good  which  he  gains 
by  devotion  to  these  ends  is  not  measured  or  lim- 
ited by  the  degree  of  success  which  attends  him. 
The  man  who  fails,  if  he  can  but  keep  from  the 
discouragement  of  failure,  sometimes  learns  more 
useful  lessons  than  the  man  who  succeeds ;  for  the 
man  who  fails,  and  rises  above  his  failure,  is  free 


164  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

from  what  is  perhaps  the  most  dangerous  temp- 
tation of  American  business  life  at  the  present 
ilay — tlie  clanger  of  measuring  the  value  of  a 
l)urpose  h\  the  immediate  and  tangible  results 
achieved. 

Fourth  and  last,  to  come  back  to  the  words  of 
our  text,  by  asking  of  God  the  wisdom  that  He 
alone  can  give.  The  man  who  has  the  Christian 
habit  of  prayer  has  a  help  for  keeping  his  pur- 
poses right  and  unwavering  worth  more  than  all 
outside  aids.  "  More  things  are  wrought  by 
prayer  than  this  world  dreams  of,"  says  the  poet. 
I  am  not  pleading  for  any  particular  theory  of 
prayer  or  any  particular  form  of  prayer;  but  for 
the  habit  of  trying  to  get  into  reverent  commun- 
ion with  God  by  such  forms  or  absence  of  forms 
as  may  suit  each  man's  needs  and  powers.  And 
just  as  he  who  habitually  dwells  upon  the  minor 
pleasures  of  the  w'orld  will  find  their  influence 
and  dominion  over  him  growing  stronger,  so  the 
man  who  learns  to  pray  to  God,  however  weak  his 
vision  of  God  may  be,  will  find  God's  hold  upon 
his  life  growing  stronger,  and  will  become,  in  the 
deepest  and  truest  sense,  a  follower  of  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ 


THE    CHKISTIAN    IDEAL 

"The  kingdom  of  God  cometh  not  with  observation." 

For  centuries  the  Jews  had  dreamed  of  a  king- 
dom of  God,  and  looked  for  a  leader  under  whom 
that  dream  should  be  realized.  As  they  cast  their 
eyes  back  on  the  splendors  of  David,  or  out  on  the 
wider  glories  of  the  Roman  commonwealth,  they 
never  failed  to  pray  for  the  coming  Messiah  who 
should  bring  to  the  race  of  David  an  empire  greater 
than  that  of  Rome.  It  was  this  hope  that  sus- 
tained them  in  their  afflictions;  it  was  this  hojje 
that  brought  them  back  from  their  dispersions. 
In  this  new  kingdom  of  God  power  was  to  go  not 
to  the  unscrupulous  but  to  the  righteous ;  not  to 
him  who  led  the  army  but  to  him  who  kept  the 
law. 

One  of  the  first  things,  and  the  very  hardest 
thing,  that  Jesus  had  to  teach  his  disciples  was 
that  this  historic  and  splendid  dream  could  never 
be   realized.      The   kingdom   which   he   promised 

was  not  like  the  kingdoms  of  this  world.      The 
165 


166  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

greatest  iiKUi  in  tluit  kiiiiidoin  \v;is  not  the  man 
who  held  the  highest  office  or  could  point  to  \\n\ 
most  splendid  achievement,  hut  the  one  who  liad 
the  cleanest  heart  and  the  most  unshaken  pur- 
pose. Even  the  best  of  Christ's  disciples  were 
slow  in  comprehending  this.  It  was  far  easier 
for  them  to  relinquish  their  homes  than  to  relin- 
quish their  dreams.  It  was  easier  for  them  to 
endure  hunger  and  cold  and  persecution  than  to 
give  up  the  expectation  of  getting  a  tangible  re- 
ward for  their  endurance,  and  being  able  to  rule 
over  their  less  worthy  fellow  men.  When  Peter 
thought  that  he  saw  God's  kingdom  on  the  point 
of  being  attained,  he  was  ready  to  fight  against 
a  hundred.  A  few  hours  later,  when  the  vision 
of  worldly  power  had  passed  away  from  his  eyes, 
he  was  ready  to  deny  the  very  Master  whom  he 
had  left  all  to  follow.  When  should  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  come  ?  Who  should  be  its  prime 
ministers  ?  What  signs  should  be  watched  to  mark 
its  advent  ?  These  questions,  and  others  like  them, 
showed  how  slow  were  the  disciples  in  understand- 
ing the  message  of  their  Master  or  the  character 
of  the  service  on  which  they  had  entered. 

Even  to-day  the  disciples  of  Jesus  have  only 


THE  CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  167 

partly  learned  this  lesson.  We  continue  to  make, 
not  precisely  the  same  mistakes  as  the  apostles,  but 
the  same  kind  of  mistakes,  about  the  real  mean- 
ing and  purpose  of  the  Christian  life.  We  do 
not  insist,  like  the  disciples  in  Judea,  upon  seeing 
an  organized  kingdom ;  but  we  do  insist  on  seeing 
our  efforts  for  good  wrought  out  in  definite  shape. 
We  do  not,  like  the  sons  of  Zebedee,  lay  claim  to 
offices  and  honors  as  a  reward  of  goodness ;  but  we 
do  nearly  the  same  thing  when  we  are  ambitious 
that  our  goodness  shall  have  some  sort  of  record 
to  which  we  can  point  with  pride.  We  do  not, 
like  Peter,  fight  for  Jesus  at  one  moment  and 
deny  him  the  next;  but  we  do  exactly  the  same 
thing  when  we  let  ourselves  be  so  discouraged  by 
failure  that  we  ask  the  sad  question,  "  Is  it  worth 
while  trying  to  be  good  ?  "  We  want  to  have 
tangible  results  from  our  goodness.  We  over- 
value the  kind  of  goodness  that  produces  them ; 
we  undervalue  the  kind  that  fails  to  produce  them. 
We  are  impatient  to  see  results  where  the  best 
results  are  often  precisely  the  ones  we  cannot  see. 
We  are  ready  to  make  sacrifices,  but  we  want  to 
have  something  to  show  for  them — not  necessarily 
in  the  way  of  personal  profit  or  worldly  advance- 


168  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

Tiionf,  but  in  the  \v;iv  of  concrete  and  definite 
progress  on  Avhich  our  minds  can  dwen  with  satis- 
faction. 

To  a  certain  extent  tliis  is  a  healthy  instinct. 
Every  man  likes  to  see  tlie  results  of  his  labor,  the 
things  that  mark  his  own  power  of  achievement. 
He  feels  a  pride,  and  an  honest  pride,  in  the  ma- 
chines that  he  has  invented  or  the  money  that  he 
has  made  or  the  prizes  that  he  has  won.  But  when 
this  pride  in  the  things  which  we  have  done  leads 
us  to  underestimate  the  things  which  we  have  not 
done,  it  ceases  to  be  good  and  becomes  perilously 
bad.  It  is  a  good  thing  to  make  money;  but  it 
may  become  a  bad  thing  if  it  leads  us  to  neglect 
certain  other  elements  in  life  which  are  more  valu- 
able. It  is  a  good  thing  to  play  to  win ;  but  it  may 
become  a  bad  thing  if  it  leads  us  to  forget  that 
there  are  other  standards  besides  the  score.  It  is 
a  good  thing  to  get  high  marks;  it  may  become  a 
bad  thing  if  it  leads  us  to  forget  that  there  arc 
standards  of  scholarship  and  of  intellectual  attain- 
ment outside  of  the  marking  book.  So  in  every 
department  of  life.  Honest  pride  in  what  a  man 
has  actually  done  may  lead  him  to  undervalue  the 
things  he  has  not  done,  and  may  warp  his  indi- 


THE  CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  169 

vidual  standards  until  lie  loses  all  sense  of  pro- 
portion between  his  own  work  and  that  of  others. 

Of  all  the  dangers  to  which  a  reasonably  good 
man  is  subject,  I  honestly  believe  that  the  great- 
est is  the  danger  of  losing  the  sense  of  moral  pro- 
portion ;  of  overvaluing  achievement  as  compared 
with  purpose ;  of  overestimating  the  small  amount 
of  visible  work  which  each  of  us  has  done,  or  failed 
to  do,  compared  with  the  vast  amount  of  invisible 
work  that  still  remains  to  be  done.  There  is  no 
success  so  great  as  to  be  worth  much  if  it  leads 
a  man  to  stop  working;  and  no  failure  so  great  as 
to  be  irreparable  unless  it  leads  a  man  to  stop 
trying. 

For  the  achievements  which  we  can  see  and 
feel  and  measure  are  not  the  great  ones.  The 
child  can  see  the  growth  of  the  house  that  he  builds 
with  his  blocks.  He  cannot  see  the  growth  of  the 
seed  which  he  has  planted  in  the  ground;  and  in 
his  impatience  because  he  cannot  see  it  he  often 
digs  up  the  seed  and  kills  the  plant.  The  life 
of  the  plant,  which  evades  our  observation,  is  a 
far  greater  thing  than  the  mere  mechanical  put- 
ting together  of  blocks  of  wood ;  and  it  is  just  be- 
cause it  is  a  far  greater  tiling  that  it  evades  our 


170  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

obscrvjition.  "  The  tliinj:;s  wliicli  arc  seen  are  tem- 
poral;  tlu'  tliin{:;s  which  arc  not  seen  arc  eternal." 
There  is  a  work!  of  practical  everyday  meaning 
in  this  text.  If  you  are  looking  only  at  concrete 
results  which  can  be  measured  day  by  day,  you 
arc  seeing  the  small  side  of  life  and  shutting  your 
eyes  to  the  large  side.  You  are  contenting  your- 
self with  a  low  standard  of  success  and  are  re- 
jecting the  higher  standards.  You  are  limiting 
your  vision  of  the  kingdom  of  God  just  as  nar- 
rowly as  the  Jews  of  old  limited  their  vision, 
though  in  a  different  way.  You  are  so  narrowing 
your  conception  of  what  is  good  that  you  never 
can  attain  to  the  best. 

During  the  early  years  of  the  Civil  War  there 
were  on  the  Northern  side  a  number  of  generals 
whose  interest  in  the  struggle  was  chiefly  profes- 
sional. They  had  been  trained  to  lead  their  coun- 
try's armies,  and  they  intended  to  lead  them  with 
skill  and  fidelity ;  but  in  the  vital  issues  over  which 
Xorth  and  South  were  fighting  they  had  no  special 
concern.  Officers  of  this  type  wished  to  do  their 
duty  creditably.  But  their  eye  was  on  the  report 
which  would  record  their  deeds  and  the  army  lists 
in  which  they  would  receive  promotion,  rather  than 


THE  CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  171 

on  the  deep  issues  of  the  struggle.  One  after  an- 
other these  men  dropped  out,  and  gave  place  to 
others  whose  military  skill  was  sometimes  less, 
but  who  were  in  the  field  to  fight,  not  merely  to 
get  the  credit  of  fighting.  Grant  and  Sherman, 
Sheridan  and  Thomas  and  Hancock,  differing  in 
all  other  ways,  had  this  in  common:  that  they 
were  not  trying  to  win  individual  battles,  but  to 
advance  a  cause  which  they  had  at  heart.  This 
was  why  Grant  succeeded  where  more  brilliant 
men  had  failed.  It  was  because  the  brilliant  men 
were  trying  to  do  tangible  things  that  should  stand 
to  their  credit,  while  the  slow  and  modest  man 
set  his  hand  to  the  general  work  and  his  face 
toward  the  general  result,  and  was  content  to  let 
the  question  of  temporary  success  and  personal  ad- 
vancement take  care  of  itself.  You  can  see  this 
same  experience  repeated  in  other  fields.  It  has 
come  to  be  a  proverb  that  no  man  ever  became 
president  who  had  made  this  the  goal  of  his  politi- 
cal effort.  Henry  Clay  in  the  first  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century  and  James  G.  Blaine  in  the  last 
half  both  made  great  names  for  themselves.  They 
built  up  large  followings  of  devoted  adherents. 
They  spared  no  pains  to  do  whatever  might  honor- 


1/-  TALKS  TO   STUDENTS 

iiltlv  1)(^  (lone  to  fnrtlior  tluMr  cliiiiicos  of  jioliticiil 
julvanctMucnt.  But  wlien  tlic  time  came  for  nom- 
i nation  or  election  the  office  went  to  men  of  in- 
ferior brilliancy  or  ability  who  stood  for  some 
inir]X)sc  or  some  principle ;  men  who  had  not  been 
piling  np  credits  to  their  own  account  but  had 
put  what  they  did  into  the  general  account  of  the 
country  as  a  whole. 

The  same  principle  holds  true  in  our  college 
life.  Highly  as  we  value  the  doing  of  things 
here  in  this  community,  the  men  who  take  satis- 
faction in  reckoning  up  the  things  that  they 
have  done  are  not  the  successful  ones.  The  suc- 
cessful man  here,  as  everywhere  else,  is  the  one 
who  is  unconscious  of  his  personal  position;  who 
is  least  elated  by  what  he  has  achieved,  least  de- 
pressed by  what  he  has  failed  to  achieve;  wlio 
through  apparent  success  or  apparent  failure 
presses  on  in  the  direction  toward  which  his  pur- 
pose l(»ads  him.  It  is  not  by  the  doing  of 
specific  things  for  others,  but  by  really  caring  for 
other  people  in  your  mind  and  in  your  heart  and 
then  living  out  the  life  that  is  in  you,  that  you 
make  yourself  a  vital  and  necessary  part  of  the 
college  community. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  173 

You  do  more  than  this.  You  can  make  yourself 
in  a  large  sense  independent  of  success  or  failure. 
If  a  man  has  set  his  whole  heart  on  the  attain- 
ment of  some  specific  end — office  or  power  or  rank 
or  wealth — he  is  ever  in  a  position  of  peril.  If 
he  succeeds,  his  success  may  set  a  limit  to  his  am- 
bitions and  make  him  incapable  of  larger  growth ; 
if  he  fails,  his  failure  may  discourage  him  forever 
from  further  effort.  But  if  he  has  a  higher  and 
larger  purpose  in  life,  and  has  faith  in  a  king- 
dom of  God  which  is  not  of  this  world,  then  neither 
can  earthly  success  satiate  him  nor  earthly  failure 
unnerve  him.  The  men  who  have  really  done 
work  that  lasts  have  been  in  a  large  sense  men 
of  faith;  men  who  did  not  let  the  visible  things 
of  the  present  get  out  of  proportion  to  the  possi- 
bilities of  the  unseen  future.  To  them  and  to 
them  alone  was  it  given  to  endure  to  the  end. 

Half  a  century  ago  there  was  an  English  scholar 
whose  life  bore  all  the  external  marks  of  failure. 
Arthur  Hugh  Clough  went  out  from  Rugby  full 
of  the  high  enthusiasms  and  ambitions  which  Ar- 
nold had  developed;  but  he  saw  the  various  enter- 
prises of  his  life  balked  by  his  ill  health,  and  the 
messages  of  his  poetry  received  but  scant  notice 


174  TALKS  TO  STUDENTS 

from  ;in  iudifferout  world.  On  his  death  hed, 
Avhoii  he  was  ahnost  too  weak  to  put  peucil  to 
paper,  he  wrote  a  last  brief  poem  which  his  friends 
found  after  he  was  gone.  That  poem,  written  in 
the  very  shadow  of  death,  is  a  message  of  hope  to 
every  man  who  wants  to  believe  in  the  coming  of 
God's  kingdom  as  Christ  nnderstood  it,  and  who 
is  ready  to  fight  God's  battle  hardest  when  the 
visible  signs  of  success  are  least. 

Say  not,  "The  stniggle  naught  availeth, 

The  labor  and  tlie  wounds  are  vain; 
The  enemy  faints  not,  nor  failetli, 

And  as  things  have  been  they  remain." 

If  hopes  were  dupes,  fears  may  be  liars; 

It  may  be  through  yon  smoke  concealed 
Your  comrades  chase  oven  now  the  flyers, 

And  but  for  you  possess  the  field. 

For  while  the  tired  waves  vainly  breaking 

Seem  here  no  painful  inch  to  gain, 
Far  back,  through  creeks  and  inlets  making, 

Comes  silent,  flooding  in,  the  main. 

And  not  by  eastern  windows  only 

When  daylight  comes,  comes  in  the  light; 

In  front  the  sun  climbs  slow,  how  slowly! 
But  westward  look!  the  land  is  bright. 


MESSAGES  OF  THE  COLLEGE 
TO  THE  CHURCH 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    PUBLIC 
SPIEIT 

"A  man's   life   consisteth   not   in    the   almndance   of   the 
things  that  he  possesseth." 

In  the  ordinary  meaning  which  is  given  to  this 
text,  we  are  led  to  emphasize  the  unimportance 
of  mere  worldly  possessions  as  compared  with  the 
vastly  greater  importance  of  the  spiritual  life. 
But  there  is  another  meaning,  and  I  believe  a 
truer  one — a  meaning  where  the  emphasis  is  laid 
not  on  the  word  "  things,"  but  on  the  word  "  pos- 
sesseth ;  "  a  meaning  in  which  exception  is  taken 
to  selfish  ideals  of  life,  however  lofty,  as  compared 
with  those  wider  ideals  of  the  man  who  works  pri- 
marily for  others. 

The  difference  between  these  two  types  of  men 
is  forcibly  illustrated  in  the  college  world.  There 
are  among  our  students  two  sharply  distinguished 
groups:  the  men  who  go  to  college  for  what  they 
can  get  out  of  it,  and  the  men  who  go  to  college 
for  what  they  can  put  into  it.     Of  course  there 

177 


178       THE  COLLEGE  AND  THE  CHURCH 

are  wide  variations  of  character  witliiu  each  of 
these  groups.  Those  wlio  are  trying  to  get  what 
they  can  out  of  college  life  fall  into  various  meth- 
ods of  self-seeking.  One  man  pursues  pleasure  for 
the  sake  of  personal  enjoyment ;  another  pursues 
athletics  for  the  honor  which  it  will  bring  him  as 
an  individual ;  a  third  takes  up  the  social  or- 
ganization as  a  means  of  personal  advancement;  a 
fourth  studies  for  rank  in  his  class,  and  for  the 
honor  and  advantage  which  that  rank  will  bring; 
a  fifth  shuts  himself  out  from  the  world  in  order 
to  live  a  life  w^hich  he  conceives  to  be  one  of  self- 
improvement.  Yet  diverse  as  are  the  outward 
aims  of  all  these  men,  they  are  characterized  by 
one  common  error — the  error  of  selfishness.  The 
evils  of  this  may  be  more  obvious  in  the  lower 
forms  of  its  manifestation  than  in  the  higher  ones. 
We  see  the  fatuous  folly  of  the  man  who  takes  his 
enjoyment  in  eating  and  drinking  and  worse  kinds 
of  self-indulgence.  We  can  condemn  the  short- 
sightedness of  the  man  who  plays  for  a  record 
or  who  studies  for  marks.  But  the  higher  forms 
of  selfishness,  though  less  obviously  suicidal  than 
the  lower  ones,  are  for  that  reason  perhaps  all  the 
more  dangerous.     So  many  a  man  seems  to  gain 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  PUBLIC  SPIRIT       179 

social  leadership  by  its  unscrupulous  pursuit,  or 
to  lay  the  foundations  for  success  in  professional 
life  by  a  system  of  self-development  at  the  ex- 
pense of  others,  that  we  sometimes  lose  sight  of 
the  effect  which  this  process  has  in  undermining 
character  and  public  spirit.  "  Virtue,"  says  a 
French  writer,  "  is  more  dangerous  than  vice,  be- 
cause its  excesses  are  not  subject  to  the  restraints 
of  conscience."  The  habit  of  self-improvement 
furnishes  a  good  example  of  this  danger.  Just  be- 
cause the  individual  actions  to  which  it  leads  may 
be  commendable,  its  devotee  loses  sight  of  the  evil 
educational  eifect  of  doing  these  things  in  a  wrong 
spirit. 

There  is  another  reason  why  the  higher  forms 
of  selfishness,  as  manifested  in  the  college  life,  are 
worse  in  their  effects  than  the  lower  forms.  The 
man  whose  temptations  lead  him  to  a  life  of 
pleasure  is,  as  a  rule,  one  whose  possibilities  of 
service  to  the  community  are  limited.  As  he  goes 
out  into  after  life  he  finds  his  power  for  good  and 
evil  alike  restricted  by  that  mass  of  conventions 
with  which  civilization  has  guarded  the  doings  of 
the  ordinary  man.  But  the  man  whose  temptations 
to  selfishness  concern  things  of  the  spirit  is  one 


ISO       THE  COLLEGE  AND  THE  CHURCH 

who  in  iiiwr  life  has  wider  i)t>ssibilities;  and  who 
if  he  has  started  himself  iu  the  wrong  direction 
may  lead  society  astray  by  the  wrong  exercise  of 
those  trusts  which  no  law  can  control,  and  con- 
cerning which  public  sentiment  has  not  as  yet 
learned  to  frame  its  judgment  and  exercise  its 
penalties. 

It  is  perhaps  the  greatest  merit  of  the  typical 
American  college  that  it  exercises  a  powerful 
influence  against  selfishness,  whether  pliysieal  or 
intellectual,  and  in  favor  of  the  development 
of  a  community  life.  It  does  not  do  homage  to 
the  man  who  is  aiming  to  make  a  record  for  him- 
self, whether  in  athletics  or  in  studies.  The  ma- 
jority of  those  who  attend  our  universities  are 
ready  to  enter  into  the  spirit  of  the  place,  and  they 
demand  that  their  fellows  shall  do  the  same  thing. 
Man  is  a  political  animal;  and  the  boys  entering 
into  a  group  of  this  kind  at  an  impressionable  age 
become  part  of  a  close  community  whose  public 
sentiment  and  code  of  ethics  take  powerful  hold 
w\)cm  them.  This  code  may  be  good  or  it  may  be 
bad.  Usually,  amid  the  imperfect  materials  of 
human  character  with  which  we  have  to  work,  it 
is  a  mixture  of  the  two.     And  yet  it  has  this 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  PUBLIC   SPIRIT       181 

result :  that  the  boy,  at  a  most  impressionable  age, 
forms  a  conception  of  a  public  conscience  and  a 
code  of  honor  which  carries  him  outside  of  him- 
self ;  a  code  which  leads  him,  not  by  physical  com- 
pulsion but  by  the  influence  of  public  sentiment, 
to  do  things  in  which  consideration  of  personal 
convenience  and  personal  advancement  are  purely 
secondary. 

The  college  is,  in  short,  a  living  instance  of  the 
possibility  of  developing  men  out  of  the  lower  and 
into  the  higher  ideals  of  life.  It  takes  them  out 
of  a  sphere  where  the  dominant  motive  is  self- 
interest,  and  into  one  which  is  inspired  by  loyalty 
and  regulated  by  the  sentiment  and  conscience  of 
the  community. 

But  what  of  the  world  outside  of  the  college — 
of  that  larger  community,  with  its  manifold  com- 
mercial and  political  activities,  for  which  the  col- 
lege life  is  but  a  preparation  ?  Here,  too,  we  find 
the  same  division  of  types.  There  are  some  who 
pursue  their  success  selfishly,  whether  it  be  in 
gaining  pleasure  or  position,  money  or  office.  Side 
by  side  with  them  there  are  others  who  pursue 
these  objects  unselfishly ;  who  find  their  pleasure 
in   the  pleasure  of  their  fellow  men;   wlio  gain 


1S2       Till']  COLLKCl':   AND  THE  ClIUKCll 

social  positiou  as  an  iiicitk'nt  in  the  iiiiprovoment 
of  society;  whose  business  success  is  obtained  by 
organizing  the  work  of  the  community  in  such  a 
way  as  to  do  good  to  hundreds  and  thousands  of 
others;  whose  political  life  is  occupied  with  the 
exercise  of  public  trusts,  where  persona/  ambition 
is  at  most  a  secondary  and  incidental  element. 

Men  are  always  divided  more  or  less  clearly  into 
these  two  types :  those  who  recognize  that  life  is  a 
trust,  and  those  who  fail  so  to  recognize  it.  It 
happens,  however,  that  with  conditions  as  they 
exist  at  the  present  day,  the  distinction  between 
the  two  types  is  more  sharply  marked  than  usual. 
In  some  ages  men  have  been  so  bound  by  rules  and 
traditions  that  he  who  wished  to  be  selfish  was 
restricted  by  law  in  his  attempts  to  encroach  upon 
those  about  him ;  while  he  who  was  ready  to  be 
unselfish  had  but  scant  opportunity  for  the  exer- 
cise of  his  power  of  serving  his  fellow  men.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  are  ages  of  liberty,  when  old 
conventions  are  broken  down  and  new  methods 
are  in  process  of  introduction.  At  such  times 
there  is  an  opportunity  for  the  self-centred  man 
to  misuse  a  freedom  which  the  community  has  not 
learned  to  regulate;   and  there  is  corresponding 


DEVELOPMENT  OF   PUBLIC  SPIRIT      183 

opportunity  for  the  public-spirited  man  to  employ 
that  same  freedom  in  giving  the  world  new  en- 
joyments which  were  impossible  in  an  earlier  age, 
and  new  ideals  which  will  serve  to  regulate  its 
conduct  for  generations  to  come. 

It  is  in  such  a  time  as  this  that  we  are  now 
living.  The  developments  of  modern  science  have 
given  new  means  of  enjoyment.  The  breaking  up 
and  re-forming  of  social  ties  has  given  new  op- 
portunities of  influence  in  society.  The  growth 
of  industrial  combination  on  a  large  scale  has 
freed  our  commercial  leaders  from  the  restraints 
of  competition,  thereby  allowing  them  an  almost 
unmeasured  power  for  good  or  evil.  The  birth 
of  imperialistic  ideas  has  extended  the  sphere  of 
action  of  our  politicians  and  statesmen  from  those 
domestic  problems  where  they  were  subject  to  well- 
defined  restraints  of  constitutional  law,  into  a  field 
of  international  dealings  where  precedents  are 
undefined,  and  where,  in  default  of  such  prece- 
dents, the  peoples  with  whom  we  come  in  contact 
have  inadequate  opportunities  of  self-protection. 

This  has  been  called  an  age  of  trusts.  The 
phrase  is  applicable  in  a  sense  much  profounder 
than  that  in  which  it  is  generally  used.    Our  large 


1S4       THE  rOTJ.ECF   AND  THE  CHURCH 

industrial  monopolies  have  indeed  ceased  to  be  cor- 
porate trusts  in  tlio  legal  sense.  Xo  longer  is  the 
voting  power  of  the  stock  of  the  independent  com- 
panies placed  in  the  hands  of  a  common  body  of 
trustees.  The  legislation  of  Congress  has  been 
sufficient  to  put  a  stop  to  this  particular  form  of 
organization.  But  it  has  in  no  wise  checked  the 
tendency  to  combine ;  and  our  large  combinations 
are  become  fields  for  the  exercise  of  a  public  trust 
even  more  than  they  ever  were  before.  The  day 
is  past  when  the  automatic  action  of  self-interest 
was  sufficient  to  regulate  prices,  or  when  a  few 
principles  of  commercial  law,  straightforwardly 
applied,  could  secure  the  exercise  of  justice  in 
matters  of  trade.  The  growth  of  large  industries 
and  of  large  fortunes  allows  their  managers  to  do 
good  or  evil  without  adequate  restraint  from  law, 
because  all  law  which  is  intended  to  stop  the  evil 
stops  the  good  even  more  surely.  This  inadequacy 
of  legal  control,  and  the  necessity  which  goes 
with  it  for  unselfish  action  on  the  part  of  those 
in  charge,  are  what  constitute  the  very  essence  of 
a  trust,  private  or  public. 

The  same  inadequacy  of  legal  control  and  the 
same   necessity   for   unselfish   action   are   felt   in 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  PUBLIC  SPIRIT       185 

oi:r  new  problems  of  foreign  policy.  We  cannot, 
in  oiir  legislative  halls  at  Washington,  attempt 
strictly  to  regulate  the  conduct  of  those  who  are 
charged  with  representing  us  in  the  Philippine 
Islands.  Our  ignorance  of  the  conditions  in  those 
islands  makes  all  such  regulation  likely  to  be  in- 
effective or  suicidal.  Of  necessity  we  leave  our 
representatives  in  distant  countries  a  freedom 
which  permits  of  abuse,  unless  we  can  have  some 
control,  outside  of  law  and  beyond  it,  which  shall 
make  them  accept  their  several  offices  as  trusts 
instead  of  means  of  gain — using  every  such  office 
not  so  much  for  what  they  can  get  out  of  it  for 
themselves  as  for  what  they  can  put  into  it  for 
those  entrusted  to  their  charge. 

But  can  we  hope  for  the  development  of  a  sen- 
timent of  honor  and  of  such  a  public  spirit  suffi- 
ciently strong  to  take  the  place  of  law  ?  To  this 
question  we  need  not  hesitate  to  give  an  affirma- 
tive answer.  We  are  indeed  patriotically  bound 
to  give  this  answer.  The  man  who  shrinks  from 
the  problem  because  he  does  not  believe  that  it 
can  be  solved  is  a  disbeliever  in  tlie  future  of 
American  democracy.  If  our  citizens  as  a  body 
should  confess  themselves  incompetent  to  accept 


1S6       THE  COLLEGE  AND  THE  CIIlTRrH 

public  trusts  because  they  had  not  tlic  necessary 
basis  of  unselfishness,  we  should  be  safe  in  pre- 
dicting the  coming  of  an  empire  at  Washington 
in  twenty-five  years.  If  the  people  had  not  the 
basis  of  character  sufiicient  for  dealing  with  the 
aifairs  entrusted  to  their  charge,  the  power  would 
be  taken  out  of  their  hands  and  would  fall  into 
those  of  individual  leaders. 

But  all  the  evidence  goes  to  show  that  Ameri- 
cans have  this  necessary  basis  of  moral  character. 
Our  standard  of  personal  morality  is  on  the  whole 
probably  higher  than  that  of  any  other  nation. 
Xowhere  else  do  we  find  the  same  degree  of  con- 
sideration for  the  weak.  Nowhere  else  do  we  see 
the  same  sympathy  between  man  and  man.  No- 
where else  is  the  spirit  of  personal  courtesy  so 
widespread.  If  we  can  thus  subordinate  our  in- 
dividual convenience  to  the  needs  of  others,  there 
is  no  reason  why  we  cannot  do  the  same  thing  in 
our  corporate  and  our  public  capacities  as  soon 
as  the  necessity  is  brought  home  to  us.  The  evil 
is  not  one  of  character;  it  is  one  of  understand- 
ing. We  are  not  suffering  from  bad  morals,  but 
from  defective  ethics.  We  have  been  taught  to 
regard  business  and  politics  as  games  to  be  played 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  PUBLIC  SPIRIT      187 

by  a  certain  set  of  rules,  and  with  no  obligations 
higher  than  those  rules.  This  may  have  done  very 
well  in  the  old  times,  when  business  was  so  small 
that  competition  set  a  limit  to  arbitrary  conduct, 
and  when  political  activity  was  kept  within  such 
a  narrow  sphere  that  the  restraints  of  constitu- 
tional law  and  of  representative  government  were 
sufficient  checks  upon  abuse  of  power.  To-day,  our 
new  conditions  make  these  restraints  inadequate. 
They  require  that  we  shall  voluntarily  assume  ob- 
ligations of  self-restraint  and  self-sacrifice  which 
go  beyond  the  letter  of  constitutional  provisions. 
They  demand  of  our  leaders  that  readiness  to  sub- 
ordinate individual  convenience  to  public  good 
which  is  the  fundamental  characteristic  of  a  gen- 
tleman. 

That  we  shall  learn  these  lessons  may  be  in- 
ferred from  the  experience  of  England  in  handling 
her  colonial  empire  and  in  dealing  with  the 
peoples  that  are  subject  to  it.  There  was  a 
time  when  England's  administration  in  India  was 
worse  than  ours  is  likely  to  be  in  any  country 
that  comes  under  our  charge ;  a  time  when  men 
of  standing  and  character,  like  Hastings  or  even 
like  Clive,  allowed  themselves  to  be  led  far  astray. 


18S       THE  COLLEGE  AND  THIO  CHURCH 

But  these  days  are  long  gone  by.  Whatever  may 
be  the  defects  of  English  colonial  rulers,  it  never- 
theless remains  true  that  they  take  np  their  work 
in  a  spirit  of  devotion  to  those  who  are  entrusted 
to  their  charge;  and  that  public  sentiment,  at 
liomc  and  abroad,  is  such  as  to  stimulate  good 
conduct  and  prevent  abuse  far  more  effectively 
than  could  be  done  by  any  system  of  legisla- 
tion, however  well  devised.  What  England  has 
learned  in  the  last  century  America  can  unques- 
tionably learn  in  the  opening  years  of  the  coming 
one. 

We  have  seen  how  our  colleges  give  their  men 
a  training  in  just  this  sort  of  public  spirit  which 
is  so  necessary  to  our  welfare  as  a  nation.  What 
the  colleges  do  in  early  life  I  believe  that  the 
church  can  help  to  do  in  later  life.  This  is 
an  age  Avhen  our  churches  are  looking  earnestly 
for  a  mission.  In  this  field  they  have  one  directly 
before  them.  We  are  in  the  midst  of  diflBculties 
that  cannot  be  checked  by  law — difficulties  that 
grow  greater  as  the  years  go  on.  Individual  ef- 
forts at  reform  seem  helpless  and  hopeless.  We 
need  a  sound  public  opinion  to  meet  them.  We 
must  have  large  bodies   of  men  who  will   fully 


DEVELOPMENT  OF   PUBLIC   SPIRIT       189 

accept  the  principle  that  we  are  members  one 
of  another,  and  insist  upon  applying  it  to  the 
problems  of  practical  life.  The  socialist  tries  to 
preach  this  principle  already ;  but  his  reliance  on 
governmental  machinery  for  its  enforcement  shows 
that  he  has  little  understanding  of  what  it  really 
means.  It  is  the  duty  of  the  Christian  church 
to  take  up  this  idea,  and  apply  it  from  the 
right  end — making  it  an  obligation  which  each 
individual  will  impose  upon  himself  rather  than  a 
burden  which  he  tries  to  impose  upon  others.  Let 
us  not  content  ourselves  with  preaching  sermons  on 
personal  morality  which  are  based  on  principles 
that  the  bulk  of  good  men  now  accept,  whether  in 
the  Christian  church  or  out  of  it.  Let  us  not  even 
content  ourselves  with  going  into  the  work  of  so- 
cial settlements  and  other  things  intended  to  give 
a  little  more  light  to  those  who  walk  in  darkness. 
These  are  all  good  in  their  way,  but  they  only 
touch  the  very  fringe  of  the  social  problem.  To 
meet  that  problem  in  its  entirety,  our  churches 
must  find  a  way  of  uniting  the  people  in  a  senti- 
ment of  devotion  to  ideals  outside  of  themselves. 
This  cannot  bo  done  by  mere  words.  It  cannot 
be  done  by  specific  remedies  for  individual  evils. 


11)0       THE  COLLEGE  AND  THE  CHURCH 

It  can  be  done  only  by  awakening  a  public  con- 
science. 

For  this  work  we  need  men  who  are  inspired 
by  high  ideals  of  duty  and  who  at  the  same  time 
understand  the  conditions  nnder  which  duty  is 
done  in  the  modern  world.  For  leaders  who  are 
able  to  do  this^  and  for  a  church  that  is  ready  to 
work  under  such  leaders,  there  is  room  in  America 
to-day  as  there  never  was  before.  When  once  this 
lesson  of  public  trust  shall  have  been  learned,  we 
shall  have  reunited  church  and  state,  not  by  those 
material  bonds  which  proved  so  destructive  to  them 
both,  but  by  a  spiritual  bond  which  may  come 
nearer  than  ever  before  toward  realizing  the  Chris- 
tian ideal  of  the  church  universal. 


EDUCATION   AND    RELIGION 

"If  ye  know  these  things,  happy  are  ye  if  ye  do  them." 

Theee  are  two  extreme  views  concerning  the 
effects  of  education  upon  public  morality.  One 
is  held  by  the  advocates  of  secular  schools ;  the 
other  is  held  by  the  advocates  of  church  schools. 
This  sharp  division  of  opinion  is  not  peculiar  to 
America.  It  is  felt  in  every  country  where  mod- 
ern education  and  modern  thought  prevail.  It 
takes  one  form  in  England,  another  form  in 
France,  and  another  in  Germany;  but  the  under- 
lying issue  is  the  same  in  all. 

The  advocate  of  secular  schools  believes  that 
good  teaching  will  itself  make  good  citizens.  He 
holds  that  a  large  part  of  our  vice  is  the  result 
of  ignorance;  and  that  if  you  remove  the  ig- 
norance you  will  do  away  with  the  vice.  He  thinks 
that  a  large  part  of  our  errors  and  our  crimes 
are  due  to  people's  failure  to  recognize  the  con- 
sequences of  their  acts ;  and  that  if  you  can  inform 
them  of  those  consequences  you  can  check  the 
191 


102       THE  COLLEGE  AND  THE  CHURCH 

tendency  to  crime  in  its  beginnings,  lie  believes 
poverty  and  shiftlessness  to  be  so  largely  due  to 
want  of  knowledge  that  if  you  provide  the  knowl- 
edge you  will  do  away  with  nearly  all  of  the  shift- 
lessness and  much  of  the  poverty. 

Up  to  a  certain  point  all  this  is  true.  There 
is  a  vast  quantity  of  shiftlessness  and  vice  due 
to  ignorance ;  a  large  quantity  of  error  and  crime 
which  would  be  prevented  if  the  source  of  error 
could  be  rendered  harmless  at  the  outset.  But 
though  you  can  thus  remove  some  of  the  moral 
evils  under  which  we  suffer,  you  cannot  by  so 
simple  a  means  remove  them  all,  nor  even  the 
major  part  of  them.  The  root  of  lawlessness  lies 
deeper  than  mere  ignorance  of  consequences.  The 
chief  source  of  crime  is  moral  perverseness  rather 
than  mental  deficiency.  If  you  improve  a  man's 
intellectual  capacity  without  correspondingly  edu- 
cating his  moral  nature,  you  are  likely  to  change 
the  direction  in  which  his  criminal  or  vicious  in- 
stincts seek  their  outlet,  rather  than  to  destroy 
those  instincts  themselves.  When  you  teach  a  man 
to  write  you  make  him  less  liable  to  commit  lar- 
ceny, but  you  make  him  much  more  liable  to 
commit  forgery.     When  you  teach  a  man  political 


EDUCATION  AND  RELIGION  193 

economy  and  law  you  lessen  the  temptations  to 
acts  of  violence ;  not  to  acts  of  fraud.  Few  of  us 
who  have  looked  into  the  statistics  of  education 
and  crime  are  optimistic  enough  to  claim  that 
they  are  encouraging.  The  improvement  due  to 
the  removal  of  illiteracy  amounts  to  something; 
but  it  does  not  amount  to  so  much  as  we  should 
like  to  see,  or  as  was  promised  by  the  early  advo- 
cates of  our  public  school  system. 

The  opponents  of  that  system  often  point  to 
these  statistical  results  with  ill-concealed  satisfac- 
tion. They  say  that  such  consequences  are  just 
what  you  might  expect  from  any  scheme  of  purely 
secular  education.  They  would  have  the  training 
of  the  intellect  supplemented  by  a  special  system 
of  religious  training,  which  should  teach  the  pupil 
to  use  his  knowledge  for  the  service  of  God  and 
the  benefit  of  his  fellow  men.  If  they  had  to 
choose  between  the  two,  they  would  regard  the 
religious  training  as  more  important  than  the  in- 
tellectual, and  would  prefer  schools  where  the 
knowledge  of  the  teachers  was  defective  or  in- 
accurate but  the  religious  principles  good,  to  those 
where  the  knowledge  of  the  staff  was  better  but 
its  orthodoxy  less  sound.     They  look  with  grave 


194       THE  COLLEGE  AND  THE  CHURCH 

apprehension  upon  the  spectacle  of  free  citizens 
trained  in  the  knowledge  of  many  things  which 
may  prove  of  use  to  them  individually,  but  not 
trained  in  those  ideas  of  religion  and  morality 
which  have  been  rightly  regarded  as  essential  to 
the  safety  of  civilized  communities. 

I  confess  that  I  share  some  of  the  apprehensions 
of  these  advocates  of  church  schools;  but  I  am 
very  far  from  agreeing  with  them  as  to  the  proper 
remedy.  I  do  not  believe  that  improvement  is  to 
be  sought  by  substituting  religious  instruction  for 
secular  instruction,  or  by  superadding  one  to  the 
other  as  though  the  tw^o  were  separate.  I  do  not 
believe  that  you  can  prepare  a  man  for  citizenship 
by  teaching  a  godless  knowledge  in  one  part  of  the 
school  time  and  a  set  of  religious  principles  in  an- 
other part ;  any  more  than  you  can  prepare  a  man 
for  heaven  by  letting  him  cheat  six  days  of  the 
week  and  having  him  listen  to  the  most  orthodox 
doctrines  on  the  seventh.  I  believe  that  botli  in 
school  life  and  in  after  life  the  moral  training 
and  the  secular  training  must  be  so  interwoven 
that  each  becomes  a  part  of  the  other. 

Tn  any  good  system  of  education  the  child  learns 
three  or  four  distinct  sets  of  lessons. 


EDUCATION   AND  RELIGION  195 

He  learns  a  great  many  facts  and  principles 
which  he  did  not  know  before  he  went  to  school. 
This  learning  of  facts  and  principles  seems  to  most 
people  who  look  at  the  matter  siiperficially  to  be 
pretty  much  the  whole  of  education.  It  is  really 
only  a  very  small  part  of  it. 

He  learns  certain  habits  of  accuracy.  Indeed, 
looking  at  some  of  the  schools  of  the  present  day, 
I  am  almost  inclined  to  modify  this  statement  and 
say  "  habits  of  accuracy  or  inaccuracy  " ;  for  in 
the  effort  to  put  more  knowledge  into  the  child 
and  make  the  process  agreeable,  the  teacher  is 
prone  to  sacrifice  that  thoroughness  and  precision 
which  were  made  the  too  exclusive  object  in 
the  classical  training  of  an  earlier  generation. 
Along  with  these  habits  of  accuracy  I  should  place 
those  habits  of  order  and  regularity  which  are  not 
learned  out  of  books  at  all,  but  from  the  quiet 
working  of  school  rules  and  school  discipline. 

The  pupil  in  a  thoroughly  good  school  also 
learns  lessons  of  public  spirit  and  self-devotion. 
He  can  receive  these  lessons  from  poetry  and  his- 
tory, if  properly  taught;  whether  it  be  the  poetry 
and  history  of  the  Americans  or  of  the  Eng- 
lish, of  the  Greeks  or  of  the  Hebrews.     He  can 


196       THE  COLLEGE  AND  THE  CHURCH 

receive  these  lessons  from  tlie  emulation  of  school 
life,  not  only  within  the  classroom  bnt  on  the 
playground.  The  good  of  modern  athletic  sports 
is  not  wholly  or  mainly  a  physical  one.  Ath- 
letics, when  rightly  managed,  give  most  fruit- 
ful training  in  self-subordination  and  loyalty. 
And,  quite  apart  from  either  study  or  athletics, 
the  child  can  learn  these  same  lessons  through  his 
admiration  of  the  older  boys  and  of  the  masters 
who  are  doing  their  work  well.  All  the  moral 
precepts  which  were  taught  by  those  headmasters 
who  had  the  greatest  influence  upon  the  character 
of  their  pupils  have  been  of  little  consequence  as 
compared  with  the  personality  of  those  teachers 
themselves.  As  we  read  the  books  of  Thomas 
Arnold  or  Mark  Hopkins  we  wonder  at  the  power 
which  these  men  exercised  over  generations  of 
English  or  American  boys.  It  is  because  we  know 
only  the  books  and  not  the  men.  Their  doctrines, 
put  into  black  and  white,  were  nothing;  their  per- 
sonality was  everything. 

I  am  convinced  that  a  large  proportion  of  our 
misunderstandings  about  our  school  system  arise 
from  our  overestimate  of  the  importance  of 
the    first    of    these    three    elements,    and    a    cor- 


EDUCATION   AND  RELIGION  197 

responding  nnderestimate  of  the  second  and 
third.  That  we  should  make  these  wrong  esti- 
mates is  not  surprising.  The  enormous  widen- 
ing of  modern  knowledge^  the  recent  interest  in 
science  and  scientific  discovery,  the  development 
of  new  means  for  the  pursuit  of  material 
wealth,  have  all  combined  to  cause  a  strong  reac- 
tion against  the  narrowness  of  the  old  classical 
curriculum.  We  have  been  substituting  history  for 
literature,  experimental  science  for  deductive  rea- 
soning. We  have  tended  to  subordinate  theoretical 
training  to  technological  ends,  often  very  unintelli- 
gently  pursued ;  and  to  value  our  teaching  by  the 
immediate  practical  utility  of  the  subjects  studied. 
To  a  certain  extent  this  reaction  was  justified.  But 
I  believe  that  it  has  gone  much  too  far,  and  has 
made  us  lose  sight  of  the  really  excellent  elements 
which  the  old  education  contained  and  which  the 
modern  education  may  be  in  danger  of  sacrificing. 
Knowledge  is  a  good  thing,  and  the  more  we  can 
get  of  it  the  better;  but  if  we  obtain  a  large  in- 
crease of  knowledge  at  even  a  moderate  sacrifice 
of  the  habits  of  accuracy  and  regularity,  we  have 
made  our  pupils  less  efficient  instead  of  more  so. 
Intelligence  is  a  most  excellent  thing  to  help  a 


198       THE  COLLEGE  AND  THE  CHURCH 

man  in  the  conduct  of  his  own  affairs;  but  if  we 
strive  to  increase  that  intelligence  at  the  sacrifice 
of  those  things  which  make  for  idealism  and  pub- 
lic spirit  we  make  a  man  a  worse  citizen  instead 
of  a  better  one,  and  run  the  risk  that  in  the 
short-sighted  pursuit  of  his  own  interest  he  may 
be  led  to  ruin  himself  as  well  as  his  fellows. 

A  few  years  ago  this  danger  seemed  to  be  a 
very  serious  one.  In  the  college,  electives  w^ere 
multiplied  without  discrimination.  In  the  high 
school,  scientific  and  commercial  courses  were 
established  on  lines  which  were  often  quite  un- 
wise. Exaggerated  importance  was  given  to 
shop  work.  Manual  training  was  sometimes  used 
in  a  way  which  made  it  not  so  much  a  training 
as  a  diversion.  The  introduction  of  kindergarten 
methods  in  the  early  stages  of  school  life  was 
guided  by  enthusiasm  rather  than  by  critical  judg- 
ment. Fortunately,  we  have  come  to  a  point  where 
signs  of  a  strong  reaction  are  manifest.  The  in- 
competence of  the  children  trained  in  some  of  our 
kindergartens  is  leading  educators  of  every  stage 
to  see  that  the  acquisition  of  agreeable  facts  is  a 
very  poor  substitute  for  the  habit  of  pertinacity  in 
dealing  with  disagreeable  ones.     The  experience 


EDUCATION  AND   RELIGION  199 

of  scientific  experts  proves  that  a  laboratory  loses 
most  of  its  value  when  it  degenerates  into  a  shop 
where  interest  in  the  making  of  an  object  takes 
the  place  of  care  in  the  testing  of  a  principle. 
Our  college  graduates  of  recent  years  find  that  in- 
discriminate election  of  studies  has  meant  intel- 
lectual dissipation.  In  short,  we  have  learned  that 
the  sugar-plums  of  education  do  not  furnish  a 
strengthening  intellectual  diet.  Under  these  cir- 
cumstances we  find  a  tendency  to  go  back  to  the 
standards  of  earlier  years.  I  do  not  mean  that  we 
shall  ever  go  all  the  way  back  to  the  dry  bones  of 
learning  which  constituted  so  large  a  part  of  the 
education  of  our  fathers;  but  that  we  shall  see, 
and  are  in  fact  already  beginning  to  see,  how  the 
discipline  which  went  with  that  old  education 
made  stronger  men  and  women  than  we  are  likely 
to  get  under  teachers  and  school  boards  who,  in 
their  pursuit  of  the  pleasures  of  the  new  education, 
forget  the  necessities  of  discipline. 

If  we  can  really  get  into  our  minds  the  fact  that 
in  any  system  of  education,  whether  classical  or 
scientific,  accuracy  and  idealism  are  far  more 
important  than  mere  knowledge,  we  shall  do  away 
with  the  force  of  the  objection  that  our  teaching 


200       THE  COLLECJE   AND  THE  CHURCH 

has  no  effect  in  character  buikling.  For  the  forma- 
tion of  liabits  of  accuracy  and  the  development  of 
ideals  are  themselves  the  very  essence  of  character 
building.  The  effect  of  this  training  tells  in  the 
most  unexpected  ways.  I  have  known  a  great 
many  socialists,  but  I  never  knew  a  single  one 
who  was  really  careful  in  liis  arithmetic.  I  have 
known  a  great  many  shiftless  and  half  vicious  boys 
who  furnished  unpromising  material  for  any  edu- 
cational system ;  but  my  experience  has  been  that 
even  in  these  cases  regularity  and  cleanliness  were 
more  potent  moral  forces  than  any  amount  of 
mere  knowledge  could  become.  I  have  seen  boys 
and  men  who  were  selfish  in  all  their  impulses, 
who  nevertheless  responded  to  the  teaching  of 
ideals  in  the  school  or  college  as  they  responded 
to  nothing  else. 

But  if  you  can  teach  in  this  manner  and  in 
this  spirit,  the  antithesis  between  education  and 
religion  disappears.  Spelling  and  arithmetic, 
poetry  and  history,  games  and  friendships,  become 
lessons  in  conduct  and  helps  to  the  formation  of 
character.  Under  such  a  conception,  sound  re- 
ligious teaching  is  the  outgrowth  of  good  secular 
teaching.      The  use  of  the   Bible   in  the  schools 


EDUCATION  AND  RELIGION  201 

justifies  itself  because  it  does  in  fact  give  those 
lessons  in  conduct  and  character  which  we  regard 
as  fundamentally  important.  Wherever  we  have 
tried  to  make  Bible  reading  a  thing  apart  from 
the  rest  of  the  school  work,  which  we  used  because 
we  thought  that  the  Bible  was  verbally  inspired, 
we  found  difficulty  in  defending  our  course  against 
those  taxpayers  who  denied  that  the  Bible  had 
any  such  special  authority,  and  against  those 
others  who  believed  that  there  was  a  church 
authority  at  least  coordinate  with  the  Bible.  But 
when  we  make  our  religious  and  moral  aim  as 
broad  as  our  whole  field  of  instruction,  and  use  the 
Bible  as  we  use  any  other  book  of  poetry  or  his- 
tory, then  we  can  justify  our  practice  in  the 
face  of  all  the  world  and  can  look  forward  with 
confidence  to  the  results. 

To  sum  the  whole  matter  up :  The  supposed  an- 
tithesis between  secular  training  and  religious 
training  arises  from  a  misconception  of  what  is 
involved  in  good  training  of  any  kind.  People 
see  the  difference  between  bad  secular  education 
and  bad  religious  education ;  and  they  assume  that 
there  must  be  a  corresponding  difference  between 
good  secular  education  and  good  religious  educa- 


202        THE  COLLEGE   AW)  THE  CHURCH 

tion.  This  is  by  no  means  the  case.  ^\nicn  a  mas- 
ter of  a  public  school  is  occupied  only  with  teach- 
ing facts  and  principles,  and  when  a  master  of  a 
religious  institution  is  occupied  only  with  teaching 
dogmas  and  observances,  they  necessarily  work  at 
cross-purposes ;  but  the  mere  learning  of  facts  and 
principles  is  not  the  vitally  important  part  of 
secular  education,  nor  is  the  learning  of  doctrines 
and  observances  the  vitally  important  part  of 
religious  education.  The  formation  of  habits  of 
discipline  and  the  development  of  ideals  of  un- 
selfishness is  the  essentially  important  thing  in  a 
good  education  of  either  kind.  When  we  have 
grasped  this  truth  we  shall  see  that  there  is  in 
the  field  of  education  the  same  harmony  between 
the  true  needs  of  the  world  and  the  true  needs 
of  the  church  which  exists  in  every  other  depart- 
ment of  human  life. 


THE    PUBLIC    CONSCIENCE 

"None  of  us  liveth  to  himself." 

This  is  an  age  of  individual  freedom.  We  al- 
low each  man  to  make  his  own  choices  and  his  own 
mistakes.  We  claim  this  liberty  for  ourselves;  we 
tolerate  its  exercise  on  the  part  of  others. 

This  is  true  not  only  in  the  practical  affairs  of 
life;  it  is  true  also  in  our  philosophy  and  in  our 
religion.  The  men  of  to-day  claim  a  right  to  do 
their  thinking  for  themselves,  and  allow  this  right 
to  others  in  a  way  to  which  former  ages  have 
furnished  no  parallel.  In  old  times  most  people 
took  their  standards  of  morals  and  religion  ready- 
made.  They  accepted  the  creed  of  their  church 
because  it  was  the  creed  of  their  church.  They 
followed  the  precepts  of  the  Bible  because  they 
found  them  written  in  the  Bible.  They  adapted 
their  own  habits  of  thought  to  the  standards  of 
right  and  wrong  which  prevailed  in  the  com- 
munity.    If  they  wished  to  make  any  change  in 

these   standards   or   interpretations   they   tried   to 
203 


204       THE  COLLEGE  AND  THE  CHURCH 

insist  that  others  should  make  the  same  change  at 
the  same  time.  Sometimes  they  succeeded;  more 
often  they  failed.  But  they  would  no  more  have 
thought  of  assuming  the  right  to  make  their  own 
philosophy  of  life  and  let  their  neighbors  con- 
tinue to  hold  a  different  one,  than  they  would  have 
dreamed  of  assuming  the  right  to  adopt  one  rule 
of  civil  or  criminal  law  for  their  own  conduct 
while  other  people  remained  bound  by  other  rules 
of  law.  To-day  all  this  has  changed.  To-day,  for 
the  first  time  perhaps  in  the  w^orld's  history,  w^e 
have  real  liberty  of  thought  in  practice  as  well 
as  in  theory.  We  leave  each  man  to  work  out  his 
own  salvation  with  a  freedom  which,  even  at  the 
beginning  of  the  last  century,  would  have  been 
regarded  as  perilous  to  the  individual  and  de- 
structive to  the  community. 

What  has  been  the  consequence  of  thus  allow- 
ing and  encouraging  each  man  to  treat  his  con- 
science as  a  thing  apart  and  his  own  salvation 
as  a  problem  to  be  worked  out  more  or  less  in- 
dependently of  those  about  him  ? 

Like  every  other  extension  of  individual  liberty, 
this  system  has  produced  a  mixture  of  good  and 
evil.    So  far  as  it  has  taught  people  that  they  must 


THE  PUBLIC  CONSCIENCE  205 

work  if  they  would  be  saved — that  no  ready-made 
standards  of  conduct  could  excuse  them  from  the 
responsibility  of  making  a  choice,  and  no  phi- 
losophy of  life  which  they  had  accepted  from 
others  could  excuse  them  from  thinking  out  life's 
problems  for  themselves — its  results  have  been 
good.  But  so  far  as  it  has  caused  them  to  do  that 
thinking  and  that  work  for  themselves  alone  and 
not  for  those  about  them,  its  results  have  been  bad. 
If  the  principle  that  each  man  should  work  out 
his  own  salvation  means  that  he  is  not  to  throw 
that  responsibility  upon  others,  it  is  good.  If  it 
means  that  he  is  not  going  to  take  any  of  that 
responsibility  for  others,  it  is  bad.  Freedom  is  a 
good  thing;  tolerance  is  a  good  thing;  but  when 
freedom  and  tolerance  are  carried  so  far  that  a 
man  withdraws  within  himself  with  the  outworn 
excuse,  "  Am  I  my  brother's  keeper  ? "  his  own 
efforts  at  personal  salvation,  however  well  meant, 
are  likely  to  come  to  naught. 

But  in  fact,  no  man  can  thus  withdraw  within 
himself.  We  are  affected  by  the  judgments  of 
those  about  us,  whether  we  will  or  no;  and  many 
of  those  who  most  loudly  protest  that  they  are  liv- 
ing their  life  for  themselves  are   really  just  as 


206       THE  COLLEGE  AND  THE  CHURCH 

much  affected  as  any  one  else.  "  If  the  foot  shall 
say,  Because  I  am  not  the  hand  I  am  not  of  the 
body,  is  it  therefore  not  of  the  body  ?  "  Amid 
the  daily  contact  of  our  social  life  habits  of 
thought,  standards  of  value,  subtle  influences  in 
the  estimate  of  right  and  wrong,  pass  from  man 
to  man  just  as  quietly  and  unconsciously  as  the 
blood  passes  from  one  part  of  the  body  to  an- 
other, bearing  seeds  of  life  or  death  to  the  whole 
body,  as  the  case  may  be.  By  this  subtle  contact 
a  sort  of  public  conscience  is  created;  a  habit  of 
valuing  things,  not  for  their  effect  upon  the  in- 
dividual, but  for  their  relation  to  certain  stand- 
ards of  the  community,  commercial  or  political, 
moral  or  religious.  The  history  of  any  people, 
so  far  as  it  is  worth  writing,  is  a  history  of  this 
public  conscience,  and  a  record  of  the  gradual 
development  of  these  standards.  The  heroes  of 
each  different  people  and  of  each  successive  age 
are  a  sort  of  embodiment  of  these  standards  in 
flesh  and  blood.  The  careers  of  the  men  whom 
a  people  accepts  for  its  leaders  and  delights  to 
honor  illustrate  the  motives  which  are  swaying 
the  morals  of  that  people  from  top  to  bottom.  The 
creeds  of  a  nation  show  what  it  pretends  to  think ; 


THE  PUBLIC  CONSCIENCE  207 

its  heroes  show  what  it  really  does  think.  Accord- 
ing as  these  ideals  of  heroism  are  high  or  low, 
base  or  noble,  so  will  be  the  whole  national  career. 
The  nation  that  receives  a  prophet  because  he  is 
a  prophet  shall  receive  a  prophet's  reward,  and 
the  one  that  receives  a  righteous  man  because  he  is 
a  righteous  man  shall  receive  a  righteous  man's 
reward.  For  the  very  fact  that  the  prophets  and 
righteous  men  are  really  held  in  honor  shows  that 
the  conscience  of  that  nation  is  truer  and  sounder 
than  that  of  the  people  which  cares  only  for  the 
more  commonplace  and  superficial  forms  of  success. 
The  existence  of  such  a  conscience  may  be  less 
prominently  obtruded  upon  men's  notice  under  a 
system  of  religious  freedom  than  under  an  or- 
ganized state  church.  The  agencies  which  give 
utterance  to  its  dictates  and  the  means  by  which 
its  commands  are  supported  may  be  less  tangible 
in  one  case  than  in  another.  But  such  a  conscience 
exists  wherever  society  exists  at  all.  Call  it  imi- 
tation, call  it  fashion,  call  it  what  you  will;  it 
is  this  habit  of  conformity  which  renders  society 
and  government  possible.  We  cannot  really  hold 
to  a  line  of  thought  without  striving  to  impose 
it  on  others.     We  cannot  really  live  among  those 


20S       THE  COLLEGE  AND  THE  CHURCH 

and  with  those  who  have  different  lines  of  thought 
from  onrs  without  being  influenced  by  their  rea- 
soning. Either  we  must  change  them  or  they  must 
change  us. 

Especially  dominant  is  the  power  of  these  pub- 
lic standards  in  what  we  commonly  call  the  larger 
affairs  of  society — in  influencing  the  conduct 
of  business  or  politics,  as  distinct  from  that  of 
friendship  or  of  family  life.  A  man  may  perhaps 
keep  his  habits  of  kindness  or  cruelty,  of  affection 
or  churlisliness,  more  or  less  independent  of  the 
practice  of  his  neighbors;  but  in  conmaercial  or 
political  questions  no  such  attitude  of  moral  non- 
interference is  possible.  The  man  who  toler- 
ates corruption  becomes  himself  corrupt  in  heart, 
if  not  in  action.  The  man  who  really  seeks  to 
maintain  a  higher  standard  must  become,  some- 
times even  in  spite  of  himself,  the  means  of  im- 
posing that  higher  standard  upon  others.  This 
fight  for  commercial  and  political  honor  is  no  de- 
fensive warfare,  in  which  we  can  be  content  to 
possess  our  individual  souls,  like  so  many  for- 
tresses in  a  hostile  countrv.  Such  a  warfare  can 
end  only  in  the  exhaustion  of  the  defenders.  It 
must  be  a  war  of  offence — one  where  we  main- 


THE   PUBLIC  CONSCIENCE  209 

tain  and  improve  our  own  standards  by  bringing 
np  those  abont  ns. 

The  work  is  a  hard  one.  The  difBculty  of  keep- 
ing our  standards  of  business  and  of  politics  pure 
to-day  is,  I  think,  greater  than  it  has  been  in 
any  previous  generation.  The  task  of  convincing 
people  in  a  democracy  that  liberty  brings  duties 
as  well  as  rights  is  harder  than  the  correspond- 
ing task  under  an  aristocracy.  A  privileged  class 
has  received  so  many  special  favors  that  you  can 
appeal  to  the  common  spirit  of  justice  among  its 
members  to  show  them  that  they  should  accept 
self-imposed  obligations  and  duties  in  return  for 
these  favors.  But  when  you  make  that  appeal 
to  a  man  who  has  taken  his  chance  with  every 
other  man  in  the  rough  struggle  of  life,  and  who 
has  had  less  than  his  share  of  power  and  priv- 
ilege, you  have  no  such  basis  upon  which  to  work. 
Again,  if  an  aristocracy  is  selfish,  this  means 
obvious  perversion  of  the  resources  and  enjoy- 
ments of  the  people  for  the  sake  of  a  small 
minority ;  and  you  can  show  thinking  members  of 
that  minority  that  such  perversion  is  unjust.  But 
where  we  have  free  competition  in  business  and 
universal   suffrage   in    politics,    it   is   very   much 


210       THE  COLLEGE  AND  THE  CHURCH 

harder  to  prove  the  unfairness  or  injustice  of  any 
result  that  may  come  from  the  practice  of  selfish- 
ness under  these  conditions.  There  is  a  tendency 
at  the  present  day  among  those  who  have  bene- 
fited by  the  outcome  of  business  competition  to 
believe  that  this  is  part  of  the  moral  order  of 
the  universe ;  and  there  is  a  tendency  among  those 
who  have  secured  the  suffrages  of  a  majority  of 
the  people  to  believe  that  the  vox  populi  is  in  this 
instance  the  vox  Dei.  But  any  sane  man,  what- 
ever his  attitude  toward  social  questions,  must  see 
that  there  are  a  great  many  cases  where  these 
assumptions  prove  erroneous.  He  must  see  that 
there  are  instances  where  business  struggle  re- 
sults in  the  survival  of  the  unfit  instead  of  the 
survival  of  the  fit;  instances  where  those  who  ob- 
tain temporary  control  of  political  power  use  it  for 
purposes  just  as  arbitrary  and  tyrannical  as  if 
they  had  never  been  compelled  to  appeal  to  their 
fellow  citizens  for  the  form  of  an  election.  Our 
industrial  machinery  and  our  political  machinery 
are  both  excellent  in  their  way ;  but  no  industrial 
or  political  machinery,  however  good,  can  take  the 
place   of   public   spirit   and   self-devotion.      And 


THE  PUBLIC  CONSCIENCE  211 

when  the  existence  of  such  machinery  is  made  an 
excuse  for  letting  public  spirit  and  devotion  go 
unused,  it  constitutes  a  menace  instead  of  a  safe- 
guard to  the  future  of  the  body  politic. 

Here  is  the  great  vital  need  for  the  church.  Not 
to  make  the  American  people  law-abiding  and  in- 
telligent— that  it  is  already;  not  even  to  make  it 
kindly  and  courteous  and  industrious — these  vir- 
tues we  have,  if  not  in  ideal  measure,  at  any  rate 
sufficiently  for  many  of  the  practical  purposes  of 
life;  but  to  fight  with  all  its  heart  and  with  all 
its  soul  that  dangerous  spirit  of  selfish  isolation 
which  encourages  a  man  to  take  whatever  the  law 
allows  and  most  approves  the  man  who  has  taken 
most.  To-day,  as  well  as  two  thousand  years  ago, 
we  have  our  Pharisees  and  our  scribes,  who  rest 
content  with  the  law  and  what  it  brings.  To-day 
also,  as  two  thousand  years  ago,  we  have  our  false 
prophets,  who  seek  to  remedy  the  errors  of  one 
kingdom  of  the  world  by  another  kingdom  of  the 
world,  whose  powers  shall  simply  be  transferred 
from  the  hands  of  the  conservatives  to  those  of  the 
radicals.  It  sometimes  seems  as  though  all  efforts 
at  reform  were  reducing  themselves  to  an  endless 


212       TH1<:  COLLEGE   AND  THE  CHURCH 

struggle  between  those  who,  having  more  money 
than  votes,  are  anxious  to  have  the  rights  of  pro|> 
erty  maintained  by  the  courts,  and  those  who, 
having  more  votes  than  money,  are  anxious  to 
have  those  rights  impaired  by  the  legislature  or 
transferred  to  the  hands  of  elected  magistrates. 
From  no  such  blind  struggle  can  any  true  reform 
come.  There  must  be  a  sense,  both  on  the  part 
of  the  business  man  and  of  the  politician,  on  the 
part  of  those  who  have  and  on  the  part  of  those 
who  desire  to  have,  that  power  is  a  trust  and  not 
a  privilege;  that  life  is  to  be  valued  not  for  what 
it  enables  us  to  get  out  of  the  people,  but  for 
what  it  enables  us  to  give  to  the  people  in  the  way 
of  service.  This  was  Christ's  message  nineteen 
centuries  ago.  This  has  been  the  message  of  every 
true  prophet  from  that  day  to  this.  This  is  and 
must  be  the  message  of  the  church  wherever  the 
church  is  a  power  among  men. 

Would  to  God  that  we  could  see  the  man  or  the 
church  that  should  bring  the  sense  of  this  mes- 
sage home  to  the  people  to-day !  We  are  as  those 
who  cry  in  the  wilderness,  "  Prepare  ye  the  way 
of  the  Lord !  "     The  dawn  for  which  we  have 


THE  PUBLIC  CONSCIENCE  213 

looked  has  not  yet  broken;  the  truth  which  shall 
move  this  twentieth-century  world  has  not  yet  been 
put  into  words.  But  there  is  light  enough  for  the 
work  of  preparation;  truth  enough  to  serve  the 
needs  of  him  who,  till  the  sun  shall  rise,  is  con- 
tent to  shape  his  course  by  the  stars. 


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194* 


WtB6 
REC'D  M 


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REC'O  LOAJUI 


.0 


otc 


131985 


Form  L-0 
20m -1,' 41  (1152) 


3 


H 


LB 
2325 
Hllb 


llllllllllllllllllii 
3  1158  01092  A 


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